Yes and Often
by Dracannia
Summary: TF:P. D4N1-3L had a disappointing night, and it's distracting him from properly working. Soundwave's aware of the problem and offers his help. This coincidental encounter leads him down a rabbit hole into the secret society the drones made for themselves and how they came to gain sentience...
1. Chapter 1

M for sex and language.

Takes place a bit before s2e10, Armada. What started as me hinting in another story that Soundwave and a drone are boning led to this mess and I have absolutely zero regrets about it. I wrote this for the fun of it, so I'm not taking it as seriously as I would my other stories.

* * *

Chapter I

D4N1-3L. Daniel. It was almost astounding and hilarious how often their serial designations translated so well into human names. Some of them, very few left now, still retained other alien names prior to coming to Earth. Names such as Calar and Ofrene went to the oldest ones, from other organic places they crossed making their way towards Earth while following the Autobots. It was equally astounding how much of the universe was organic in nature. But some of their names couldn't translate at all. FC-6V90 named himself Trevor. How the hell did that even work? There were absolutely no Fs or Cs in Trevor. Fredric would have made more sense.

But Daniel wasn't thinking about that any more. His thoughts kept changing as he tried to work. Kirk was disappointing last night. _No, focus._ These codes make no sense; how are we supposed to decode this garbage? Make someone else do it while he took care of his—_Focus, damn you_. Oh, it's too hot in here. No, it's the perfect temperature, as it's meant to be. Perfect atmosphere. Perfect, unlike last night in his—_Will you stop that already?_ Does Soundwave have a cipher we can use to speed this along or is he just winging it like the rest of us? Is he _actually_ working on the relic coordinates? Damn, look at those biolights, those legs—_He's a commander, you fragging idiot, quit thinking like a slut for two Primus-damned minutes and work!_

He was too jittery. He kept shaking his head but the thoughts kept coming back. Kirk. Fucking Kirk. He should've known better than to let a miner have his way. Ground drones were always so quick to get it over with, never savoring or taking their time to actually enjoy the moment. And they were always so uncreative! What kind of name was Kirk, anyway? How could anyone say it properly during interface without sounding like a bad hiccough? Maybe he should ask Elias to help him later with—

Daniel took his digits off the keyboard and leaned his head back to hold in an irritated sigh. He pretended to stretch, tilting his helm far to one side then the other. Something popped. That felt nice. Maybe he could focus now.

Look at the screen. Just the screen. Look at these words, Dan. Are these even words? They're just symbols. Symbols that probably translate to other symbols that translate into more symbols and _then _translate to words. That's how he'd write this if he were making up an entire language during wartime.

Focus. Any progress? No, because he keeps thinking about Kirk. Frag Kirk! Kirk's a two out of ten! A very dusty, selfish, inconsiderate two! Frag it; one, he's a one, and even _that's_ being generous. Daniel was in pain and frustrated. Frag Kirk. No, not literally, he's terrible. Scooter was a better frag than Kirk, and Scooter never frags.

Daniel shifted. He was almost ready to bang his helm onto the keyboard when he felt something crawl up his back and over his shoulder. He gasped. He looked down to see the head of one of Soundwave's tendrils creeping along his frame and retreating back. Daniel turned his head to see Soundwave standing three feet behind him. The officer lowered his head and extended a private link to hold to his vow of silence. This link never felt like Soundwave was talking directly to a person; it felt more like he was using the person's own vocabulary in their mind to communicate, and so it sounded like their own voice at times. Daniel was pretty sure Soundwave would have never asked in this specific string of words:

[_What the hell is wrong with you?_]

"S-Sorry, sir," Daniel replied. "I'm distracted." _Stupid, that's not what officers like to hear._ "I can manage it." _Too late, idiot, you already dug yourself a hole. You'll get transferred back to mining if you keep it up._

Soundwave turned towards the door exiting the records room, hinting to Daniel that he should follow. The drone gave a simple and hesitant "yes, sir" for the sake of the others knowing that he was ordered to leave. This was it. He was back to mining. Screw mining! It's mindless work! And those same mindless ground drones made a habit of maiming themselves or getting into "accidents" just to get a lift back up onto the ship for a patch only to get back to work at the next depot. It was depressing that their only time for a break and a shower was when they were hurt. He never wanted to go back there. He was a ship drone and he made sure to stay on the ship.

The silent officer stopped. Daniel halted a few paces behind him, waiting for anything, but unprepared for what was going to happen. Soundwave turned on him. Two tendrils struck out, wrapping themselves around Daniel's arms. He was slammed against the wall. The tentacles slithered their way down, spiraling around his waist and legs next.

"Commander!" he said with less dignity than he intended. "I'm sorry that I was slacking! I'll do better!"

Soundwave stepped closer. He said nothing between their link. Daniel was fearing the worst.

"I'll work harder, overtime, anything!"

Soundwave's head slowly sloped, like his audio receptor was being dragged to his shoulder. He felt curious. Why was a drone begging for more work? Did he think he was going to die?

"Isn't…" Daniel looked carefully for the right words. "I was being insufficient. Doesn't insufficiency lead to termination?"

The officer's head snapped back up. No. And yes. [_D4N1-3L, you are being insufficient. You have already admitted your distractions. Your overall current physical condition is concerning and may have something to do with these "distractions." You are typically hardworking. Today, you are lacking._]

"I know, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

[_I know the cause, D4N1-3L. You have been shaking so loudly that the clattering of your armor distracts everyone else. Focus requires silence. Your mind is anything but. You will be relieved, and you will be expected to continue working when we're done._]

"Re-Relieved…?" His interface panel warmed.

Soundwave was quick to bring it to his attention. One of the tendrils clamped hard to the closed panel and its little fiber tongues stretched out to find the override locks. Daniel shuddered at the feeling. Was this really happening?

The panel slid open. The head of the tendril teased at his port rim. He clenched and gasped reflexively. He hoped he didn't offend the commander by doing that. It didn't seem like Soundwave took notice of it, if he did at all. It was so hard to tell. Daniel was used to body language telling a mech's tone and feelings, but Soundwave just stood there, unmoving, with the two tentacles doing all of his work. One worked at his valve, stretching it slowly, dipping the head in and out. The other snaked its way back up Daniel's chest, curled over his shoulder, and found the processing port at the atlas of his neck. The jolt of the connection shocked the drone. He felt violated as Soundwave ran through recent memory files. At the same time, it felt so strangely freeing.

[_So, this was the mech who left you unsatisfied. K1-1RC. Five minutes. Only one of you overloaded_.]

"Commander…" was all Daniel managed to say, and it came out so needy. _You could do it in two, couldn't you?_

He was sure Soundwave caught on to that thought. The tendril at his port rammed two more inches in. The drone cried out and bucked with what limited space he had from being suspended against the wall. He felt it wiggling around, looking for the right nodes to hit and charge as it slithered deeper in. The head clamped itself shut tight and slowly started spinning, sending Daniel into a heated frenzy as he lolled his head side to side.

Soundwave stepped closer and dragged Daniel higher up the wall. The drone scraped his pedes against the surface behind him. Something else felt like it was being pulled from his mind. He looked down to see a countdown timer on Soundwave's facial screen. One minute, twenty-four seconds.

The tendril inside him slowed its rotation and pumped deeper until it nearly hit the ceiling node. It was moving in a strange way. The only way Daniel could describe it was, ironically enough, sound waves. A crest, a trough, and a shallow amplitude. The tendril squirmed like this while inside him, with the crest bumping against the most sensitive clusters that spread heat throughout his body. His shoulders shook. His pelvis bucked out towards the commander. Soundwave's head tilted once more as he analyzed. The tendril inside froze and started rubbing against the front wall of Daniel's valve. The countdown timer rid itself of twenty seconds while Daniel moaned his pleasure.

"Harder, more! Please! Frag me harder, commander!"

[_You want this._]

"I need it! Please, sir!"

[_Keep screaming._]

The bodies of the tentacles maneuvered themselves again, contracting to lift Daniel's legs from the wall and spread out. Daniel looked down, noticing Soundwave was directly between them, watching his port getting fragged by the commander's tendril. The countdown knocked off another five seconds on account of new data being retrieved.

Daniel arched his back. His arms flexed against the restriction of the coils that held him in place. He wondered if Soundwave was also getting off on this. The officer didn't show it. Maybe he didn't care. Maybe he was more concerned about this drone working, and said drone was not able to work when he was left wanting for hours since last night with… Kirk. You drones have names?

Daniel could no longer tell what was his inner thoughts and what were Soundwave's through the invasive connection. It didn't matter. Nothing else mattered except the feeling of the thick tendril imitating impossible movements of a spike inside his spasming port. The only sounds in the hall were the drone's pleas and moans, the muffled revving of his engine, and the whirring of Soundwave's appendage as it slicked in and out with wet thumps.

He looked down one more time at the officer staring up at him between his legs. There was a thought, a fleeting fancy that he believed Soundwave wouldn't act on, so he squashed it. The officer, surprisingly, obliged the helpless mech with this silent, passing plea. He reached an arm up to scrape gentle, thin digits up the drone's thigh. Sparks ignited within him. Soundwave's countdown blinked each second as it came down to the final ten.

"Commander, I-I'm…!" Daniel mewled. "Ah!"

His overload nearly crashed his systems. Before Daniel threw his head back to scream it, he saw Soundwave's own frame twitch in response to the mental onslaught of raw lust powered through the linked tendril. The drone's valve clenched tight over the second tentacle. His body convulsed awkwardly in suspension. He was disappointed to find out that Soundwave's transfluid could not be ejaculated through the appendages. That, or the commander really wasn't finding pleasure from this. Whatever. Doesn't matter. The mech without a boner was doing a hell of a lot better than…. The frag was that miner's name again?

The restraining bodies of the tendrils relaxed, causing Daniel to fall on his aft against the floor with a loud clang. He leaned his back on the wall, looking up at the beautiful, thin mech standing over him. The timer blinked 00:00 a few times before it closed with a flash of an electron beam.

The appendage in his port pumped four more times, slowly, before sliding out with a wet pop. The drenched coil flicked itself absentmindedly over Daniel's legs to shake off some of the lubricants. The drone thought it was sexy.

[_Clean yourself, Daniel. You will be expected to continue working again in thirty minutes._]

"Yes, sir," Daniel sighed contently, and added, "Thank you, Commander Soundwave."

Soundwave walked away. Daniel watched him leave. He obviously didn't expect an officer to cuddle or do aftercare or anything for him, but at least he was given a period of grace to compose himself. The drone stood up. He found his balance and started walking, limping, towards the showers. As he walked, he realized too late that Soundwave had addressed him by his nickname.

xXx

And that's how Danny boy and Soundwave met prior to Knockout's Jekyll and Hyde story. This ain't a one-off, I have some more.


	2. Chapter 2

Alternative title: In which Soundwave's an absolute mess.

* * *

Chapter II

As usual, Soundwave worked late nights. The Iacon database was quite the puzzle. It had ciphers within ciphers. No letter could be translated directly from another and individual words depended on the surrounding ones. Whoever coded this was either insane or a genius. It was a welcome challenge, but he knew he could not do it all by himself. He handpicked three drones, without their knowledge, based on their processing abilities. He changed their schedules around so they would come work on decoding. They would figure out they were not picked at random if they were decoding each day. He wondered if they were aware Soundwave knew of their growing sentience. He knew of their sentience, yes, but not their culture. How odd it had been to find out they were actually _naming_ themselves. What other surprises were there?

Their reproductive drives were certainly among that list. He was told drones had no such drive. They were built, not born, on an assembly. Did Shockwave intend for the drones to reproduce?

His mind wandered. That was the sign that it was time to quit working. If he was not completely focused, the next time he did this work he would feel distracted. He turned off the monitor, disconnecting his tendrils from the server, and walked away. The last drone decoding, OZ-5392, waited a few more seconds before he, too, signed off.

Soundwave walked towards the mess hall. Inside were scattered, quiet groups of the ship's skeleton crew lingering around, refueling late. They tensed when they saw the officer come in. They busied trying to empty their cubes of energon so they could begin their shifts. There was a full cube sitting lonely on the edge of a counter. Soundwave smiled inwardly. There was some drone, somewhere, he didn't know who, who made it an unwritten rule to leave out at least one cube for the commander who always came for his ration long after the others, their lord and officers and drones alike, had retired into the night. Different drones left a cube behind, but it was usually the same one. They had been doing this for the past decade or so. What had he done that deserved this routine? Soundwave played back the feed to find out who the thoughtful drone was this time. YV-0091. This one typically left the drinks. Somehow, when this specific drone left out a cube, the drink had a calming and warm taste to it. He wondered, now that he had new information, if this one had a human nickname too.

Soundwave grabbed his cube and skulked off to his own quarters to drink it in peace and avoid the tense atmosphere the nervous drones around him gave off. Laserbeak rattled in his housing. His levels were low and he was impatient for a refuel.

The thin mech came to his quarters and walked inside. Laserbeak detached and shifted into a more avian form. He flew circles around his master, twittering and chirping electronically. Soundwave put the energon cube on the desk near a monitor against the wall and peeled back a corner. The small drone perched itself on the edge of the cube and bent forward to sip.

The commander went to his berth, lying flat on his back. The drone Daniel crossed his mind. The drone said neither yes or no to Soundwave's offer of release, but he saw into his mind and knew he wanted it. He only did it because he needed Daniel to think. The drone was too overcharged for too long and there was only one way to get it out of his system. The signs of neglected release were all there and it was distracting both him and the officer. The Vehicon served him better by working.

Daniel was one of the few who spoke up to officers when the other drones were too frightened to. He spoke with respect and humility, something he could admire and appreciate. Now that Soundwave knew there was an underlying culture among the drones, he wondered if Daniel was somehow a ranked member among them, designated to speak for them.

There was a hint of animosity, as far as Soundwave could tell from peering into the drone's mind. Ship drones and ground drones. Either Daniel thought himself higher than the mining drones, or he had found his niche at a desk and did his best to make sure he was never going back down there. Whatever the case, he knew he was a smart mech.

For a second, Soundwave was amused at the idea that even drones could disappoint each other. K1-1RC, an excavator from a recent mining pickup who was on board to fix a broken strut in his arm. The commander didn't look too far into the memory playback to see what had happened between this miner and poor, neglected Daniel. He knew only the adjectives the latter drone picked out about the experience: Sloppy and unsatisfactory. Daniel practically shoved the other one out of his room after that terrible performance. Soundwave was curious to know if he himself performed any better to fully get the charge out of the ship drone's system.

He shouldn't care. He knew he shouldn't, but he did. He linked himself to the camera feeds and cycled through them until he registered D4N1-3L. He was outside his room with one of the silver-framed Seeker Eradicons. The jet drone looked like he had the other pinned to the wall in an embrace, pressing the bottom of his helm in mock of a kiss against his neck. Soundwave turned on the audio.

"I didn't get his name."

"He fragged your processor out and you didn't bother for his name?"

"I know, it's terrible."

The silver drone ran a digit tip up the Vehicon's servo.

"I guess you don't really need me, then, huh?" he said.

"Do _you_ need me, Elias?" The purple drone turned his head, cutting off the jet from his motions of intimacy so they could face each other.

"Well, I… You know me, I'm not gonna force you if you're not feeling it."

"I can work myself into it. It's easier than you think."

"Oh yeah?"

"Here." Daniel reached up to stroke along the edge of the silver Seeker's wings. Soundwave felt a shiver go down his back, imagining what it felt like to have those dark talons caress him.

"Ooh, frag."

"See? Like I told you, it's all about the significant points. Wheels, wings, glass—"

"Is that how your mystery mech handled you?"

"Actually, no. He kept his focus down under."

"And he was somehow better than a miner? You _sure_ it wasn't a miner? Ground drones love going straight for the goods."

"Single visor, not doubled; so, no chance it was one of them. He was surprisingly gentle about it. Well, sort of gentle. It's hard to explain."

Soundwave let out a long exhale. Daniel was talking about him, and he, thankfully, was omitting the commander's name. Yes, this drone was a smart one—he had the decency to keep quiet that it was an officer, and Soundwave of all mechs, who helped him reach an overload.

"I'm starting to think you dreamt this up, Dan."

"It says something when a dream can get you off harder than the real thing, then."

"How long did it take him, you think?"

"Oh, I timed it. Two minutes."

"Two minutes! Primus damn, please get his serial and pass it on to me."

"Less than, actually. To be fair, I was already charged up and heated and he could tell."

If Soundwave ever bothered to turn on his vocals, he would have laughed. Instead, his chest twitched. He watched the two drones as they started revving themselves into a mood. Gentle touches were ghosting over sensitive areas. The jet—Elias, was it?—was digging talons into Daniel's thighs, tugging, asking to lift the purple mech off his pedes and hold him against the wall. Soundwave felt something in his lower torso tighten.

"Inside, you animal," Daniel chuckled.

The two drones migrated into the room. Soundwave quickly flipped to the inside camera to see Daniel's room. It was simple, as expected: A thin berth in a small room with no possessions and a desk with a small computer monitor. Elias tried herding him to the berth as quickly as he could, but the Vehicon pushed past him to grab a small black device on his desk. Soundwave tried analyzing it. It was not a device he was familiar with. Daniel pointed the box towards the camera.

"Buzz off, pervs."

The camera feed went dead.

Soundwave sat up, jerking his head left, right, up as he cycled quickly through nearby cameras. How did Daniel know of the cameras in the private rooms of the drones? The devices were almost microscopic. Had he built something to jam the signal? Soundwave's engine growled, since his voice could not. He went back to the dead feed and adjusted a few things to get it online again. He was head of communications and navigations, damn it, he could get the video and audio back if he wanted! No junkyard jammer was going to thwart him.

What he saw and heard made his frame flare up. Elias was lying beneath Daniel, rubbing hands over his legs and hips, the other scraping their interface panels together to get a rhythm going. The motion slowed down after a moment.

"What's wrong, Dan?"

Daniel looked over his shoulder at the camera. Soundwave tilted his head impishly as though they could see each other. The drone could have known the camera was back on only if he was in sync with the communications network.

"Someone's getting smart," Daniel murmured. He reached for the jammer on his desk and clicked a button to turn off the feed again.

Soundwave smiled. He stretched himself across his berth. One of his tendrils slid out to wrap itself around his waist and thigh. The closed head rubbed softly against his interface panel. He cycled through frequencies again to turn on the camera, and this time he made sure that the frequencies were constantly changing to combat the jammer.

"Eli! Ahh…! Ngh… w-wait…" Daniel turned again. Soundwave inhaled sharply at seeing the digits of the jet already inside the port he tended to hours ago. "Persistent pervert. Frag off already!" He clicked the button on the device. Nothing changed. The commander's fans hummed as his panel snapped open and his tendril massaged and circled to get into his valve.

"Is that Chaz?" Daniel scoffed. "Chaz, get a fucking clue! It's not happening, babe."

"Ignore them, you fucking diva," Elias snarled, "we'll show them how it's done."

Soundwave relaxed back on his berth as the silver jet kept turning Daniel's attention back to him. The purple drone was having quite a fit, claiming that no one else could possibly know about the private cameras and he was the only one smart enough to make a jammer specific to them. Elias was annoyed.

"So, you've met your intellectual match, big deal."

"It is if they're going to make a habit of spying on me!"

"You and I both know they're just thirsty for action."

Soundwave would have called bullslag on that if it weren't for his own tendril digging four inches and counting into his lubricating port. Initially, he was helping a drone dissipate a sexual charge, and now the drone left the commander with his own untended wants. He wondered, was he really so deprived that he turned to voyeurism?

"If it bothers you that much," Elias grunted as he switched their positions in the berth, "then we can go somewhere else."

"There's nowhere else, you moron," Daniel growled. "There's cameras everywhere, even in closets. If I use a jammer on any one of them, I'll get caught."

"And you using it on your own camera's not as bad?"

"No one looks at the private feeds! They're on a whole other grid apart from the main one. You have to hack into them. Hardly anyone knows they're there!"

"Apparently our stalker does."

"Shut your—" Daniel hit both of his shoulders. The silver jet laughed.

Soundwave hadn't realized that the buried tendril stopped moving.

"You're right, Elias, I'm not in the mood."

Soundwave wanted to hiss so badly that the psychic connection between him and his surveillance drone caused the little avian to hiss for him. The tendril snaked out. Its twin joined and both slammed hard onto the floor. The commander lifted himself off the berth a few inches and twisted himself around so he was on hands and knees. His engine growled as he stared into the video feed on his facial screen.

"After all that teasing, too," the jet laughed.

"You've done better."

"Ouch!"

Soundwave bent his head low trying to keep this primal rage in check. His hands clamped the padding of his berth. He pressed his helm against it. His knees drew closer together and his thighs scraped each other while a new rush coursed through him. He ran Elias's identity through the database for a match to get his serial. EL-14Z.

"You'll have something over the mystery mech, if anything."

"And what's that, Dan?"

"You'll cuddle."

Soundwave shut the audio off. He was sick of their talking. He was angry. Angry for how this turned out, angry that the silver drone was there instead of him, and, most importantly, angry for lusting after a _drone_ in the first place. His tentacles dismounted, leaving behind scrapes and dents in where the claws had dug in, and furiously wrapped themselves around the commander. He contracted them in certain places to restrain himself, getting heated off of the pressure. He switched off the video feed, preferring to use his own imagination against seeing the drones just lay there. They weren't doing anything exciting.

And, evidently, neither was he. He couldn't make up his mind what to do next. He pictured Daniel below him. No, he didn't want him there. Behind him? Also no. Both interface panels were open, unsure of which one he could get the most mileage out of tonight. The tendrils could only do so much to imitate the reality he wanted. His processor raced through several different positions, none of them satisfying enough to his lust. With an intense roar of his engine, he loosened the hold he had on himself and raced to his personal washroom to take a cold shower, nearly tripping over himself as he ran. He unhitched the three locks hidden underneath seams that kept the facial screen in place so the water could splash over his blushing face.

Laserbeak remained perched on the glass edge of the energon cube. After witnessing his master having a rather pathetic tantrum, he went back to sipping at another fraction of the drink.

xXx

I mean, we all knew Soundwave was a creep anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

Y'know. I said I wasn't taking this story seriously. But another "what if" came to mind. I'm gonna have to do it. I'm gonna have to turn this into a plot to state a theory. I've already edited the summary box. This is The Performer all over again. Damn it all.

* * *

Chapter III

Daniel's spark felt frozen. He was having conflicting thoughts, a dissonance which he knew would interfere with his work later. He was both afraid and excited to be near Soundwave, but more of the former emotion than the latter. He had time to think about what had happened yesterday, a little too much time to think while Elias was in recharge next to him. He had been scared when the commander handled him. It had only felt good because his body physically needed to reach a threshold. All the times he had made fun of others for "thinking with their spike" and here he was, getting off on this… _assault_ because it was convenient for him at the time.

He couldn't bring himself to say the word, let alone think it. He needed synonyms for it. He wanted it, yet didn't want it. Soundwave didn't offer, Daniel never asked. But he enjoyed it. And he'd do it again. He would want those cables wrapping around him again, teasing him, invading him, all while the commander simply watched and decided when exactly he was going to make the drone overload. Daniel felt his frame heat up again and he had to obliterate the idea that Soundwave was ever going to dominate him again.

_Dominate?_ he thought. _Did I just discover something about myself?_

It was a one-time thing. No commanders, no officers, ever interfaced with drones. Not even Knockout, as starved for attention as he was after Breakdown's death. He would learn to let it all go. It could only ever exist in impossible fantasies now.

The door hissed open. Lonni was early to their shift. He knew why they did it; Lonni wanted to come in early so they could leave early without anyone asking questions or caring why. Daniel tried picking up that habit, but something felt wrong about it. He would rather come in a few minutes before any commanders did and leave late to feel like he was productive today. Though no one important gave a damn about it. Besides, he didn't sneak around into the Hub like Lonni loved to do after their shift.

"Morning, Lonni," he muttered as he went to take his post at a terminal.

"Danny," the drone said without turning. "Thought you'd be late."

"You mean later than normal."

"That, yeah."

The conversation stopped there. Talk too casually and for too long before the officers came in and it would set a mood that the officers could sense. Drones were supposed to be a little less than sentient, just enough that they could perform simple tasks on their own and not ask questions. Questions got you smacked. Even questions asking for clarification, especially around Starscream. That was why Steve always asked why when Starscream paused between scheming, sense he was so hopelessly infatuated with that screechy Seeker. The other drones found it pointless to even respond to Starscream sometimes. Thank Primus he was off the ship.

Maybe that was the other reason why he felt so afraid to face Soundwave again. The other had burrowed past the crust his mind and learned that the drones named themselves and addressed each other by a designation rather than a serial number. The communications officer now knew that the drones had a sentience different than what was programmed into them. Would he stretch his authority and start prodding for information? He wished he was what the commanders and officers really thought the drones were, just so he could stop putting on a different face for work. At least he and the others were able to relax around Breakdown, who had used the drones for a receptor to talk into and probably had gained an inner suspicion that drones were smarter than they seemed after the numerous socially therapeutic sessions. If he did, he likely never cared. Drones made good gossipers and therefore good listeners. Knockout, from what Breakdown described of spending centuries with the mech, never outwardly seemed to listen or just never knew what to say in return. Drones knew exactly what to say and how to speak their minds.

Neither Lonni or Daniel paid attention to Soundwave when he walked in. No hellos, no nods; absolutely no gestures of greeting or acknowledgement. As soon as the door closed, it opened back up again with Ossen coming in nearly at a jog. Ossen, who nowadays liked to go by "Ozzy" because the human nickname sounded better to him than the Báth Coalean name, took his spot silently at the next open terminal. Daniel wanted to talk to him, just to ask him if he woke up late and that was why he nearly ran in. But there was a rule: No hidden communication around the communications officer. Out of anyone, Soundwave would undoubtedly pick up the transmission. The drones managed to keep their grid hidden for now. One slip-up and their little semblance of freedom was done for.

For a few hours, work was going slow. Daniel's processor felt scrambled just from staring at the symbols, all of them starting to blend together to make less sense than they had before. He looked over to Lonni, desperately wanting to ask if they were any closer to decoding something. He saw something crawl up the drone's back. One of Soundwave's feelers went up to connect itself forcibly into Lonni's atlas port. His intakes hitched when he heard the clamps pin into the dermal plating. Daniel felt a rush of fear. What if Soundwave was looking for more evidence of sentience? Primus, and it just had to be _Lonni_ of all people; the one who indulged in their hidden freedom the most! One of the few that would be the most questionable of their sentience, especially of self-identity! If Soundwave learned more about their secret society….

Lonni's shoulders sagged and the tentacle dismounted. It swerved over to Daniel and locked into his atlas. Daniel did his best to block out anything that didn't have to do with the immediate task. But Soundwave wasn't downloading, as far as he could tell. The commander was uploading. He was giving Daniel new bits of information, _useful_ information having to do with decoding the database. Something of this sequence of code looked familiar and Daniel scrolled through hundreds of lines of code.

_Don't disconnect._

He thought it. Soundwave stopped his own typing to turn around. Daniel felt a question through their link and he couldn't be bothered to answer, no matter the audacity of disregarding authority. He found what he was looking for in the Iacon database and used the formulas and programs Soundwave gave him to improve upon. Several letters appeared. Soundwave turned back to his own terminal to input more data. Simultaneously, he could see more unintelligible letters become legible numbers. It was not yet a full set of coordinates, but it was better than having absolutely nothing.

[_Thank you for your contribution._]

Distinctly Soundwave's part of his processor spoke out before it severed the link. The commander's digits flew across the keyboard. The new ciphers allowed parts of the encrypted database to become clearer, but they were still unreadable. Daniel would have had himself a sigh of relief, if it weren't for another whisper in his mind.

[_You will be rewarded._]

Soundwave plugged both of his tendrils into Lonni and Ozzy's atlases. Daniel assumed it was to hand off the programs. He spent the rest of his shift in uneasy silence. He hardly paid attention when Megatron walked in to check their progress. Their lord was satiated, but not satisfied, and attributed all progress to Soundwave. As usual.

* * *

Lonni left their shift early. Ozzy followed about ten minutes later. Daniel assumed they were off to go mingle in the Hub. He planned on sticking to his full shift and then some, but now he wasn't so sure when it was just him and Soundwave in the room. He dared to peek over his shoulder to see what the commander was doing. He was no longer on the decoding project. The commander's terminal screen was checking through at least ten different systems and hundreds of files on the ship. This final diagnosing process meant he was getting ready to sign off and leave.

Daniel's processor was slowing down now. He closed the Iacon file. He turned and took two steps towards the door before he felt a tickle at the front of his processor.

[_Do not leave._]

He was unsure if he needed to go back to his station or stand where he was. He was frozen to his spot. Daniel cycled through a few terrifying emotions, all of them having to do with Soundwave's potential invasion of privacy. Drones don't get privacy. Drones don't get anything. He should have known better. Oh, to just be stupid like Shockwave intentionally designed them to be, blissfully ignorant and uncaring! What happened that made them all like this? Why did it have to come to this?

[_Approach._]

Mindless drones were not allowed to disobey or hesitate when ordered. Daniel turned and walked towards Soundwave, stopping himself at a three-foot distance.

"Sir," he said respectfully, bringing a fist to his chest in salute.

Soundwave's head turned to glance but he said nothing. The windows on the monitor disappeared and the holographic keyboard became a blank. With the systems scans over with, the commander faced the drone completely. Daniel felt something crawl up his leg. He didn't need to look to know what it was.

[_Your performance was admirable, Daniel._]

The drone felt his spinal strut straighten and lock up.

[_You shall be rewarded, if you accept._]

He was surprised he was offered a choice at all. He could say yes or no to the "reward," but he felt as though it still was not his choice to make. The tiny tongues from the head of the tendril along his leg flickered along a seam between his inner thigh and his pelvis. He locked up that servo to keep it from twitching.

"I do not deserve a reward," he said. He couldn't trust his voice to say anything more to defend his decision.

The second tendril snaked out, reaching around his neck to establish the deeper, secondary connection. Daniel's entire frame twitched when Soundwave began putting thoughts and ideas in his head, promises of another mind-blowing session with bothof them overloading.

"You…" Daniel huffed. He was about to state something, but decided against it. He was sure Soundwave was picking it out of his processor anyway. "I have… one request."

Soundwave tilted his head.

"Make it last longer than two minutes this time."

[_Accepted._]

Daniel expected the commander to slam him to the ground or the terminal board or the wall like he did last time. The tentacle closest to his face pressed some of its length against his cheek and Daniel reactively nuzzled into it. The appendage at his leg traced the seam it was at, going over the drone's hip, across his aft, and made its way back forward, rubbing itself along the interface panel. Daniel wasn't sure if he was experiencing sensory sensitivity or if he was picking it up from Soundwave's connection, but he could feel the cabling of the tentacles contract with the right amount of pressure that made him ache for more of it.

His mind—or Soundwave's, it was hard to tell—whispered one word: Variable. Before he could question it, the input at his neck discharged itself and snaked forward to wrap in front of Daniel's neck and slither its way across the adjacent shoulder. The other pressed up and slid against his port until it came to the head and teased exactly where his anterior node would be if he were to open himself up to the touch. The drone instinctively ran a hand down his midsection, pressing a point just above his pelvic armor. He kept his visor locked on Soundwave, waiting on some cue that was not going to happen. The commander had not moved at all, save for his extra limbs.

"If you're getting hot off of this," he dared to say, "you're really good at hiding it."

[_I am observing._]

The tentacle on his shoulder ran down and replaced Daniel's hand. The closed head pressed gently and ran itself up and down before trying to dig itself between the mesh of protoform and the armor without much ground to be made from the tight weld. The drone let out a soft moan. At the same time, his interface snapped open.

Soundwave leaned against the terminal at his back. He used his hands and arms on the tilted surface to lift himself up slightly off the ground and sit on the offline keyboard panel. He sat forward with his elbows at his thighs and his digits laced together between his legs. At the same time, Daniel was making sense of the commander's words.

"Is this an experi—Ah!" The tendril below clamped two of its claws onto his anterior node and rolled it between the false digits. He swayed to get himself balanced. His legs felt like they were about to give out. By spreading them further to get his center, Soundwave misinterpreted the gesture as a plea to do more. The tentacle stopped teasing the node and rubbed its tip against the valve to determine how much lubricant was present before he was comfortable with going any deeper. The side-to-side shake of Daniel's hips wasn't helping him with that decision.

"This is an experiment, isn't it, sir?" Daniel managed to say. He took a part of the coiled tentacle that ran down his chest to bring it up and nuzzle into it. "Variable and observation. Your words. I'm wondering: What's the research?"

The audacious question earned him a jolt from both tentacles; from the one above his pelvis and the other just inside his port. The surge met in the middle at a cluster of the most sensitive nodes that put him to his knees with a pleased scream.

[_Primary experiment: Ability to grant the subject an overload without use of invasive psychic techniques._]

The external appendage curved its way back up and its tongues waggled to make a point. Daniel could hear something in this transmitted message, a certain tone. He could not help but think that Soundwave was starting to use his some of his own voice instead of echoing the drone's vocabulary.

"You want to see if you can do it without your mindreading," Daniel chuckled. It was so risky to be casual, but he figured they were beyond that by now.

[_Secondary experiment: Ability to overload oneself with a partner when invasive psychic techniques are not a factor of prediction. Resulting anticipation: Suppresses sexual drive._]

There it was again. The message somehow sounded more natural to the Vehicon. There was a different tone that was not his own being mimicked by telepathy. But from here on, he had not heard that tone again.

"You…" He looked down, noticing that Soundwave's tendrils had slowed down. Could the commander not talk and move these at the same time? He tried helping by sliding a hand up the cable that was in his port, poking a sharp digit inside for the appendages to share. "You didn't get off last time because you knew exactly when I would?"

[_Situation shall be rectified._]

The tentacle pushed deeper in, dragging his digit with it. Daniel tossed his head back to yell. A single yell. No other accompanying movement. Soundwave was going through his mind wondering what needed to be done since he was determined not to use a patch to pry it out of the Vehicon's mind. Daniel was not moving like he had yesterday, when he _could _move, that is. There were less amounts of lubricant this time. What factor was there that he had not calculated?

Elias. Soundwave perked up at the realization. There were certain movements the Seeker drone EL-14Z had done to rev Daniel into the right mood. Daniel himself had told the other how to do it. The bodies of the tendrils coiled themselves quickly around the Vehicon. He gasped in surprise and fear alike as they dragged him closer to Soundwave and brought him up to his pedes. They relaxed and settled, untangling themselves and finding other spots to wiggle in to. One pressed its sloped body against Daniel's back to hold him from backing away. The other found its way back to its master and slipped between his legs.

The drone's hull expanded and contracted at a forcibly shallow pace. Their faceless masks were inches from each other. Soundwave took up a hand and ghosted his thin digits from Daniel's knees, up his thigh, and over his aft. The purple drone shook with a moan.

[_You are permitted to touch me._]

He transmitted it for clarity's sake, though he sorely wished he would not have had to. No one ever touched him. He was sure even Megatron was hesitant to touch him. Starscream absolutely learned not to touch him ever again after a rough example of why one should not abuse and tease his Minicons. His calculations currently required there to be mutual forms of physical attention for this to work. He hadn't done it like this in ages; it was always with these longer extremities. He was basing his movements from some other drone now.

Daniel, naturally, was scared to touch the commander. He started with a gentle hand on his chest. The chest shifted. A chunk of it came loose and finished its transformation. Laserbeak, in his surveillance mode, hovered in the air for a while before going to rest himself elsewhere and the Vehicon's gaze followed to see where it would perch. He believed Laserbeak was being used for a second angle the commander would view as they continued on. Soundwave took the drone's lower faceplate to turn him back to their moment. He didn't need a transmit to tell him to ignore the little spy. Daniel glanced down to see the commander trying to work himself up slowly.

"Put that away," Daniel instructed, putting his own hand on Soundwave's inner thigh to rub up and down. The appendage at his panel slowed down and retracted back into its housing in the blue-grey mech's back along with its twin. The Vehicon moved himself closer. Putting two hands on Soundwave's legs, he spread them apart so he could stand between the space. He pulled him down, getting the commander to sit at the edge of the terminal so their panels were closer to touching. Soundwave jerked his head down, back up, down again, tilted it, looked back up to Daniel in quick motions meaning to signal his flustered excitement. He had to put his hands on the drone's shoulders to keep himself from sliding forward off the terminal panel, but it was Daniel's spot close between his legs that had kept him from coming down any further.

"I'm overstepping," Daniel said. "Sorry, sir."

Soundwave wanted to say something. Nothing articulative came to mind. He was confused. He was a little thrilled. That was factored into the calculations but the intensity of the two was all wrong.

Daniel, however, was figuring something else out about the communications officer. He dipped his head down to press it into Soundwave's neck.

"You _did_ get charged, didn't you, sir?" he asked. By now, adding the "sir" was just to maintain that he was far beneath the other's occupation and he would be mindful to stay there. "Forgive me, I'm going to make assumptions out loud." He ran his hands up Soundwave's waist. The commander's head leaned back at a shallow angle to keep his optics on the drone. "Yesterday, I wasn't able to please you. I apologize for my inconsideration."

Soundwave's frame jerked and his head snapped forward with his chin nearer to his chest. It scared the drone. He thought he hurt him. But the commander's head came back up and his hand touched along the side of Daniel's face.

"Was… that a laugh? Sir?" He almost forgot the essential honorific.

The officer straightened his neck. The hand came down to the other's chest. He could sense how surprised the Vehicon was.

"You've never laughed before."

[_You are acting._]

"Acting? Sir, I do not understand."

A straight beam pulled up on Soundwave's facial screen and the wavelength adjusted as the individual playbacks went on.

"_Inside, you animal. / Buzz off, pervs. / Chaz, get a fucking clue! It's not happening, babe._"

Daniel froze again.

"Were you…?"

"_No one looks at the private feeds! They're on a whole other grid apart from the main one. You have to hack into them. Hardly anyone knows they're there!_"

The capture wavelength disappeared.

"Fuck." Daniel put down a hard emphasis on the vowel. Under normal circumstances, with any other mech, with any drone, he would have started shouting about how much a pervert they were and ended whatever relationship they were having. But this was Soundwave. This was his commanding officer. This was the one mech who knew the entire network of the ship, inside and out. Of course he had found the private feeds, he probably installed them himself! The Vehicon paled in thinking that he probably knew about the drone's sanctuary network as well.

[_The experiment will continue._] Soundwave put one of Daniel's hands above his interface panel and leaned back.

"You know…?"

[_I know of the drone residence camera feeds._]

"What else do you know?"

He cocked his head quite dramatically, lifted himself up again so he was dangerously close to touching their faceplates together. His shadow was cast over Daniel ominously in the little amount of light that was in the room to begin with, and he asked: [_Is there more I should know?_]

Daniel wanted to kick himself in the aft.

[_Drone knowledge was predicted to grow. Development of personalities were not. You will help me investigate this phenomenon later._]

"Please…." Daniel stepped back, and the space given made Soundwave slide and drop back onto his pedes. The drone bowed as low as he could get without falling completely to the floor. "Please, sir, it was an accident!"

[_I am aware._]

"We didn't—We were just—I mean, all this time…!"

[_Cease talking._]

The drone's knees turned to jelly. He went down and wrapped two hands around one of Soundwave's ankle joints. "Please, sir, don't decommission us!"

Soundwave looked down at the begging drone.

[_Is there a reason I should?_]

"We weren't meant to be sentient like this! I know Lord Megatron's edict: Anything he can't predict is terminated!"

[_Did he directly state this?_]

"N-No! But that's how he acts!"

[_You have observed demonstrations of this presumed behavior and formed your own conclusion. You analyzed._]

Daniel stayed shaking on the floor. He couldn't trust himself to say anything else that would give more information Soundwave could use against him and his kin.

[_Stand, Daniel._]

The Vehicon slowly and awkwardly stood back up. He locked himself into a subservient position with his arms to his sides and his head down.

[_Your psychological developments were not predicted in your manufacturing. It does not hinder your ability to work. It does not interfere with regulation. It does not pose a danger or threat to the Decepticon cause at the present. I will investigate this matter for the sake of understanding your cognitive science and how it came to be. None of this will be reported or documented in the ship's mainframe._]

Daniel brought himself to look at Soundwave.

"You won't tell Lord Megatron?"

[_Lord Megatron has other priorities than to be concerned with the psychology of drones._]

"Thank you…" Daniel's shoulders relaxed. He remembered his place and straightened his posture once more. "Thank you, sir."

Soundwave stepped forward. Daniel took some steps to the side to allow him to pass by. The commander stopped in front of him. The turn of his head almost seemed like he was glaring.

[_I ask for your assistance in this project after working hours._]

The officer reached down to scrape a digit against Daniel's still open port and trace the lubricant across the outer node. It made the drone shiver.

[_Beginning now._]

Laserbeak returned from a shadowed perch to fit himself into the docking portion of Soundwave's chest as they walked out of the room. Daniel paused to smear off some of the lubricant on his inner thigh and shut his port closed before he forgot about it.

xXx

Danny, if a hot and creepy psychic mech with moveable tentacles and has an interest in your psychology more than your body asks you to bone him…. Hold on, actually, that sounds more questionable than I realized. Don't finish that for me. Just go forth in the name of discovery and tell me how it turns out.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

"If we're going to your room, sir, we need to get there at different times."

[_Why?_]

"Because someone on monitor's going to see us."

[_Elaborate to me why this is a critical issue._]

"Drones gossip, sir."

[_You are worried for your reputation._]

"Exactly."

[_You insinuate you have a reputation._]

"W-What?" Daniel almost felt insulted.

[_What sort of reputation do you hold among the Eradicon army?_]

"For the love of—You're pushy when it comes to questions, sir, all due respect. They'll just talk! They'll say 'Hey, I saw Danny and Officer Soundwave walk back to his place. I wonder what happened!' And then they'll pester me _endlessly_ until they get an answer."

[_Do drones understand the concept of favoritism?_]

"Without a doubt."

[_Have there been disputes from two or more drones experiencing, witnessing, and understanding this concept?_]

"Oldest example in the book, sir: Laertes started lying to Valentino about where he was just so he could chase Killian's tailpipe. Dumbaft, he is. Val's a fair guy and Killian wants nothing to do with most people. We're thinking about going into the schedule and see if we can send Laertes off to a mining line for time out."

Daniel knew he was talking too casually, but it was far too late for that now. Soundwave knew for a fact about the drone army's cognitive development and their assignment of names. He agreed to help him understand the drones and in return the commander guaranteed his silence. He would drop his professional act only during these after-work hours, but he refused to not say "sir" every now and then to keep the glass wall between him and the commander.

[_I understand this idea can develop into a problem in the long term, given our occupational and social rankings._]

"My thoughts exactly, commander."

They reached the mess hall. Laserbeak detached from his housing and floated above the drone's head.

[_You will retrieve your ration first. Laserbeak will direct you through hallways that lack patrol units to guide you and grant you access to my quarters._]

Daniel inhaled, shook his head once, and fought himself to keep his thoughts from wandering into different and inappropriate places. But it didn't stop his vocal processor.

"Should I tell Yovanni to mix you something spicy tonight?" Soundwave's blank face stared at him for an uncomfortable amount of time. "I'm joking, sir, I'm only joking."

[_What is Yovanni's serial?_]

"YV-0091."

Soundwave looked down.

"Wait, sir, do you know Yovanni?"

He looked back up to answer. [_YV-0091 occasionally leaves my ration on the counter when I am late to recharge._]

"Y-Yeah… He started doing that maybe ten, twenty years ago? He was concerned about your health and suggested that if anyone thinks about it then they leave a cube out for you to pick up, instead of you going all the way to the storage then all the way back to your room. Even with you bridging there that's extra strain when you're already tired."

[_YV-0091 began this routine?_]

"So, you did notice! Yeah, our prime mixologist himself started it."

[_Mixologist?_]

"He's a bit of a chemist. He can turn low grade into potent high grade with just a few drops of something he cooked up in whatever spare time he could find. He's a maestro at it."

[_Then it is no wonder YV-0091's offerings are always… "spicy."_]

Daniel laughed. Soundwave started to walk away.

"Wait, sir! What about your ration?"

[_Retrieve it for me._]

The familiar feeling of something snapping in the front part of his processor told him Soundwave cut off the link. Daniel walked into the mess hall. Laserbeak stayed outside to wait. The drone walked past the social groups, that were starting to lose members from the changing of shifts, to get to the bar counter. He pictured what this place might have looked like with more lively bots around, with a real bartender and music and everything. Not that Yovanni wasn't a real bartender. He was the closest thing the ship could get to one, and he believed his talents were being wasted by needing to be so secretive about his dabbling in mixing.

"Yo, 'Vanni!"

"It's now been zero days since I've heard that joke," Yovanni sighed as he rummaged under the counter for a small bottle, "and three times I've heard it tonight alone. The usual somnambulance special or are you thinking about having a little fun and joining the servers?"

"Wow, a dive suggestion from you?"

"I'm just saying, you should enjoy your own work. You're the one that made the Hub what it is now, right?"

"It was a group effort. I just did the environments and connectivity stability."

"And the security and the maintenance, blah blah. And you should feel proud of that. After all, there can't be a Hub without the connectivity and security." A drone from down the counter slid his cube over and asked Yovanni for a special mix. "I'm on it, sweetie."

"I don't feel proud when most of them flock to the club level anyway," Daniel groaned as he sank with his arms crossed on the tall counter. "Most patch work goes into that stupid place."

"Bots like to party."

"They asked for fantasy servers and housing, massive city and rural maps for racing, even a damn park! You know how hard Jessup had to work for NPC AI to make it realistic just so we all don't have second jobs?" Yovanni started dripping chemicals into the cube while Daniel went on a rant he had heard before. "You know how hard _I _had to work because they wanted at least five or six different kinds of architecture from different planets we visited? I still have people telling me that I should put in a third moon so the skybox looks even more like Tophawei when it's supposed to be from Lovis 37G!"

Yovanni purposefully changed the topic. "So, sleeping pill or gamer's lifeblood tonight?"

"Unmodified."

Yovanni paused. "You break my spark, Dan, you know that?" He shouted at the drone down the counter and slid the spiked cube back in his direction. "Dusty for Dusty!" The drone named Dusty grabbed his cube and lifted it with thanks.

"Just get me a virgin, Yovanni, I'm not feeling exciting tonight."

"You sour my creativity!"

"Know what, how about you make it a challenge for yourself? Make a new and tasty low grade."

Yovanni's visor flickered with thought. "I accept, boss."

"Where's Commander Soundwave's cube?"

"I don't usually put it out until an hour after the skeletons start wandering in for their pre-shift mingle."

"I saw Commander Soundwave go straight to his quarters after leaving."

"Son of a bitch, that mech's going to malnourish himself to death before his processor implodes from data overload."

"Say, you wanna play a prank on him?"

"I don't feel like getting blasted out of an airlock right now, but thanks for the insane recommendation."

"You honestly think he'll know?"

"Depends, boss." Yovanni leaned on the counter with his arms spread. "What sort of prank?"

"Spike his drink. Something to get him relentlessly charged up."

"You and your sexual deviousness. You ever stop to think that not everyone's as thirsty as you are?"

"You're the only person who doesn't ever get thirsty, Yovanni."

"Scooter's asexual."

"Graysexual. I fragged him. Twice."

"Of course you did. You're gross."

"Anyway, we might even be doing Commander Soundwave a favor."

"If it were Knockout, I'd say yes."

Someone else walked up to the bar that forced their conversation to a pause. They exchanged small talk while Yovanni quickly worked on the mech's drink. Daniel would've smiled if he could. Yovanni never worked fast unless he was interested in the conversation he was having before. He finished the drink and shooed away the drone.

"Why do you want Soundwave all charged up?" he asked in a hushed tone.

"Alright, maybe not relentlessly, but enough to get something flowing down where it matters."

"You still haven't answered my question."

"Doesn't our hardest working officer deserve a nice, relaxing cocktail that'll help him get rid of a thousand years of stress? A cocktail only Yovanni, our unfathomably imaginative bartender, can whip up?"

"Stop trying to flatter. That shit hasn't worked on me in five years."

"Call it payback for never saying thank you after twenty years of being so considerate? You go out of your way to make him a drink, but does he even realize it? Even Knockout noticed the zing in the taste!"

"You still haven't answered, so you need to stop talking."

"Only because you want me to stop telling you the truth."

"Primus! I'll smack you."

"Indulge, Yovanni!"

"Fucking sh—! Okay, if it'll get you out of my circuits and off my counter! Here's the deal, sweetie: Too potent and it'll have too much taste and last too long. Too little and it won't do anything but make him a little warm."

"You're Yovanni. You know the sweet spots."

"I… _hate_… your voice right now." He bent down to gather a small handful of bottles to figure out which ones he needed. "I usually spike Soundwave's drink with a moderate sleeping agent, just in case his mind's moving too fast for him to recharge. Now you've got me mixing him an aphrodisiac! You owe me, Daniel."

"How does two straight days off sound?"

Yovanni stopped and almost dropped a bottle. He squatted to save it and came back up.

"You're a liar."

"I'll talk to Harrison and make it happen."

"Two days?"

"You'll have two days. Make them count. Learn something. Go take a drive in Paris for all I care."

"Are you kidding me! I'm making laps on every Bundesautobahn I can!"

"Fine! Go to Germany, whatever. Go wild."

Yovanni scattered his potions on the counter to eyeball the right mixture. "How strong do you want this again?"

"Not enough that he'd need help with his… physical condition. Enough to charge him up that he'll have to self-service to get rid of it."

"Got'cha. And here's your stinking virgin, slut."

Yovanni took out two cubes and pushed one closer for Daniel to take. The Vehicon peeled back the corner and sipped it from the triangular opening on his lower faceplate. The mixologist went to work with adroitness, humming and mumbling over which chemicals would best roofie the commander's low-grade fuel without changing too much of the flavor composition. He sealed the top and shook it vigorously.

"Let it sit a second or it'll burst."

"You're the best, Yovanni."

"And you're supposed to be a role model of our community, but here we are."

Daniel stood up with both cubes and added, "You know, Ozzy's working on a massive patch to add flavor sensory to the Hub. You could help him out."

"Why would I want to help you crazy bastards further tear yourselves from the real world?"

"We added a bartender NPC with your name on him."

Yovanni's hull seemed to drop with another sigh as he picked up an empty bottle and beat the side of it into his other hand.

"Alright, fine, I'm gone! Just consider it!"

Daniel walked out of the barroom. Laserbeak was hovering exactly where he left him. Without wasting any time, the tiny surveillance 'con flew off at a walking pace to take Daniel down several hallways to avoid anyone who was wandering around. The last few hallways he had never been in before. As he walked silently, he imagined what Soundwave's room might look like. He spoke to a few maintenance drones before and none of them had ever mentioned going inside that room. They were usually called to Knockout's room for heavy cleanup after Primus knows what, or Megatron or Starscream's for a bit of dusting and sprucing to keep things in order. No one saw Soundwave's, as far as he knew. What sort of things would the most private commander aboard be keeping?

Laserbeak used his code to open the door. Daniel hesitated at the arch to wait for explicit permission. It took a few seconds before the commander acknowledged that the drone had not moved.

[_Enter._]

The Vehicon stepped forward and got a better look at the interior. He expected the room to be untouched beyond the installation of a berth and a monitor like the rest of the drones. The walls were repainted a color between mauve and lavender that soothed his optics. There were shelves of thin data pads stacked with tiny knickknacks that didn't seem to have any identifiable form. The berth, as he expected, was larger than his own. It sat on a thicker base that had four cut-out alcoves, two on either side, that had padding in them like they were miniature beds. Laserbeak flew over to the terminal against the wall and screeched at Daniel as it shifted into a bipedal, winged form.

The purple drone walked up to the silent mech, who stayed sprawled over his berth. Half of him looked like he was melting off the side with an arm and leg draped over the edge. Daniel placed his own cube on the stand nearby and peeled the corner off of Soundwave's. He stayed still, holding the cube in both of his hands in waiting. The officer slowly turned his head and finally pushed himself to sit upright. He took the cube and stared at it for a short moment before looking up at Daniel.

[_Turn around._]

He obeyed. Laserbeak flew past his head, nearly grazing the sharp wingtips against his neck to get to his master. Daniel heard three clicks and a hiss, and then silence for a time. He heard a slight shuffle and a low hum as the commander's fans turned on. The drone smiled to himself.

[_You tampered with this mixture._]

"I told Yovanni to give you something sexy. Sir." Damn it, he was forgetting to say "sir" too often now.

[_Why?_]

A tendril lashed out to painfully plug into his atlas before he could even stutter. Soundwave dug through memories and played back the bits of audio he found most intriguing.

"_Spike his drink. Something to get him relentlessly charged up. / Alright, maybe not relentlessly, but something to get him flowing down where it matters. / Doesn't our hardest working officer deserve a nice, relaxing cocktail that'll help him get rid of a thousand years of stress?_"

"You make it impossible to lie, sir," the Vehicon sighed.

[_What did you offer YV-0091 in exchange for this drink?_]

Daniel sighed. He knew Soundwave was testing whether or not he'd tell the truth.

"I told him I'd do him a favor."

"_How does two days off sound?_"

Busted. "I've got connections to make it happen."

[_You are lying._]

"I'm not lying, sir! I promise!"

[_You are not telling the whole truth._]

He ran through Daniel's thoughts. He could not find what he was ultimately looking for, but he found other pieces of internal dialogue that intrigued him. While they had been alone at the terminals, Daniel could tell Soundwave was both nervous and doubtful about what to do next without the aid of his psychic connectivity. The Eradicon just wanted to help by putting a dab of an aphrodisiac into his drink for this moment. He figured that if Soundwave was better charged then he would not be so apprehensive when it came to trusting his instincts.

"I was… trying to help…" he muttered.

[_How do you plan on granting YV-0091 two days free of work?_]

Daniel whimpered. Soundwave grew evermore suspicious.

[_Close your firewall._]

"I…"

[_That is an order._]

"There's a council!" he blurted out. He would rather rat out one of the biggest secrets on the ship with his own vocoder than too allow Soundwave to break past his mental security and learn everything without knowing why the drones did it. "There's a council of us…."

[_Are you a member of this council?_]

"…Yes, sir."

[_What is your position?_]

"I just…. Please, sir, you have to understand."

[_Grant me full access to your memory archives._]

"Sir, please!"

[_I have promised you my silence. You have nothing to fear. Grant me full access to your memory archives or I will force entry._]

"Let me keep my privacy!"

A shock ran through his systems and Daniel fell flat to the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter V

When Daniel gained a semblance of consciousness, his head felt light but the rest of him felt heavy, as though the gravity had increased and was keeping him down. He brought himself to his pedes, swaying as he stood up to combat the pressurizing sensation. He looked around. There was nothing but darkness. He stood on nothing and there was nothing. It was only empty black.

"Hello?" No echo within a spacious room.

"Greetings," came an unfamiliar voice.

He spun around, trying to pinpoint where it came from. It was everywhere and nowhere at once. It had a strange and deep electronic reverberance to it that made it sound more like an AI computer than another bot.

"Where am I?" he demanded.

"Perceived location: D4N1-3L's temporal processing unit."

"The temporal... That's where memories are stored. That makes no sense; how can I…?"

One by one, tiny image screens appeared around him and put him at the center of the sphere they were creating. They lit up the area, forming a grid pattern, and pulling all of their light to the center to illuminate Daniel's false body. Before his optics, a digitized form materialized and solidified into a bipedal frame.

"Commander!"

"Access to D4N1-3L's memory archives: Achieved. Resulting injury to core processor: Three-percent damage to integral structure. Treatment: Restorative nanite injections. Recovery period: Five-point-seven hours."

"You… You broke into my mind?"

"Damage: Minimal."

"We're _in_ my mind?"

"Estimation: Correct."

"Fuck…!" Daniel sunk back onto the ground with his hands on the back of his head. While he was having a panic attack, Soundwave looked around for a way to organize the memory files in chronological order. "This… You can only do this if you started a cortical psychic patch!"

"Assumption: Correct."

"Are we in the med bay right now? Is Knockout watching this?"

"Assumption: Incorrect. Cortical psychic patch technology: Functionality based on Soundwave's biology."

Daniel shook his head and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Your extra limbs…"

"Decepticon engineering of cortical psychic patch technology: Inefficient in comparison to its origin."

"We're still in your room…"

"Search: Serial designations of all Eradicon council members."

"No, please!" Daniel panicked. He crawled closer and curled himself into a ball. Soundwave looked down at him with no change in his body language. "Please, sir, just let me explain!"

"Query: What is there to explain that your memories cannot tell?"

"Our reasons for it!"

"Search: Reason for Eradicon council establishment."

"No!"

"_I'm still not too sure about this council thing._"

Daniel looked around to find an enlarged video file of when he and another were talking about the secret establishment of a drone hierarchy centuries ago, back before over half of them had names. It was Elias speaking.

"_We already have our commanding officers. We can do our work just fine on our own. Why do we need a council?_"

"Because we've made our own society," Daniel, both in memory and presently in the imagined space of his mind, spoke. "Societies need leaders sometimes."

"_What does that mean?_"

"Maybe they just want to make sure we don't frag ourselves over and abuse the world we made for ourselves. If Lord Megatron hears about it, he'll probably dismantle us all blindly."

"_What, and we should give him focus to whose aft to tear apart by setting up a council?_"

"There's got to be rules, EL, or we'll all crumble. It's not like it's a closed ordeal anymore, we opened the Hub to everyone when we realized keeping it to a few mechs breeds… Frag, what's the word I'm looking for…? I don't know. It'll start spreading the idea that there's a dictatorship among us when we don't want that. We want more of a democracy, at least within our own ranks; the commanders still have the higher authority. You can show up to whatever meeting we have and speak up about our decisions, or tell us something we're not aware of. The only dictatorship is Lord Megatron's, but he doesn't know of our condition, so we have to govern ourselves."

"'_We'?_"

"They've… Well, Baram nominated me his successor when he offlines."

"_D4's got responsibility now! So, you'll be heading the security?_"

Soundwave ceased the playback. Daniel felt his spark sink.

"Search: The Hub."

"Wait, no! Stop!"

Before he could stop himself, Daniel had snapped out of his trance and lunged at the psychic body of Soundwave. The room tore itself into thin pieces and stretched their consciousnesses across the limitless space.

* * *

It was a few moments before the drone would come back online. Soundwave had kept watching him and drank from his cube without fear that the other would wake up and see him without his facial screen. The energon certainly was laced with something. Even Laserbeak was feeling its effects. The little spy housed itself in one of the four cutout semidomes to rub and scrape his body against anything that would help get rid of this charge. Soundwave, as burning as the sensation felt, had managed to keep himself restrained. The tendril that was still connected to Daniel's atlas was quaking. His interface panel was dangerously close to snapping open. He stared at the unconscious drone on his floor, wanting desperately to shock him awake so they could finish what he had started earlier. This inferior class of bot had the nerve to tamper with his drink, and laughed about it. He would punish him, certainly, but he wanted him awake for it. His engine gave out a high whine, as only jets could do.

Daniel's visor flickered online. Soundwave put down his cube and clicked his facial screen back into place. The drone lifted himself with his arms but did not yet have strength in his legs.

"Heh… I thought for sure you were going to rummage around, sir," Daniel groaned.

Soundwave remained silent.

"Thank you… for respecting my boundaries, if anything else."

Soundwave felt his face tighten with suspicion. With the connection still in place, he silently swam around Daniel's recent memories, looking for the last ten minutes. The last thing Daniel remembered was getting electrocuted. He had absolutely no recollection of Soundwave forcefully invading his archives and the conversation they had within the perceived space of his mind.

And the silent mech would keep it that way.

[_The attack damaged your processor._] Even though he would not tell him how it became damaged, Soundwave did not want him to remain injured that way for too long. [_You will report to the med bay tomorrow for repairs._]

"A direct shock to my head." Daniel grunted as he sat upright and turned to face him. He bent his head in submission and rubbed the back of his neck. The tendril disconnected and he itched at the opening. "I'm sorry for offending you, commander." Laserbeak screeched. Soundwave shivered. "And I'm sorry for messing with your drink without your permission. It won't happen again."

[_You would be wise to remember your place._]

"Yes, sir."

Soundwave waited. The drone stayed on the ground, only moving to shift himself to kneel on his legs. The commander's imagination wandered into places that were influenced by the chemical of his drink. His head tilted back and his fans and engine worked in unison. Daniel dared to look up. Soundwave glanced back down at his submissive servant. The sight of his subordinate, the ideas that danced through his mind, the primal instinct to do whatever he wanted…. The silent mech's interface clicked open, his spike sliding out.

"I'll help you if you need me to, sir," Daniel said, his voice wavering with uncertainty. He did not know if Soundwave still wanted him here, or if he was let off with a warning. He saw movement in the alcove bed at the stem of the berth and noticed that Laserbeak was staring at him with his head cocked to the side to glare with one bright optic.

The blue-grey mech's legs parted a little inch. His tendrils slid out to hook underneath the drone's arms to hoist him to his pedes and guide him closer to the edge of the berth. The small spy underneath them squawked sporadically with a laugh. Soundwave positioned the other so that his hands were planted to the berth on either side of his hips. Their faceless plates were so close that Soundwave feared the drone could see his true face in this lighting. Upon thinking it, his used his synchronic link to the mainframe to dim the lights in his room and alter its color to keep Daniel from noticing anything.

"You look good in this light," the drone said, bringing up a hand to touch the frame of Soundwave's visor. The commander snatched his wrist to stop him and tilted his head a sharp but mere centimeter. "Sir."

[_Remember your station._]

"Forgive me, commander."

[_Events happening in this room will remain secret. Maintain your persona to ensure no errors are made outside of it._]

"I understand, sir."

The Vehicon could tell what he was trying to say: Keep playing the subordinate and don't make a habit of side comments and gestures, even privately, or it will bleed into the conduct of his work environment. It was more for Daniel's safety than Soundwave's. If Daniel had made unsolicited compliments offhandedly and without thinking while others were listening, the commander had full rights to decommission him on the spot. But he had a better idea.

"Sir, if I may?" Daniel stroked one of the snaking tendrils that were moving idly, waiting for a command and not knowing what to do with themselves until they had one. He traced it until he held the spiked tip and guided it to his atlas. He felt their processors link up and immediately took advantage of it.

_Now I can tell you how beautiful you are._

Soundwave quickly severed the link. Daniel felt his ego and confidence pancake to the floor.

[_Primary experiment: Ability to grant the subject an overload without use of invasive psychic techniques._]

The drone dipped his head as the statement had been repeated. His fans hiccupped from holding back a sigh.

"I understand, commander."

Soundwave let go of his hand. Daniel caressed a leg from his thigh up to his pelvis. The silent mech's hull expanded in reaction. The tendrils slithered about to find comfortable places without restraining the drone, looping around his waist and over an arm or a leg, teasing a sensitive seam and occasionally emitting sparks from their tips. Daniel's hands wandered lightly and slowly over the plating. He traced the edges of Soundwave's hips, drawing his digits along the biolights of his protoform. The commander barely moved in response, so the Vehicon figured he may be doing something wrong. Soundwave, not only a psychic through aggressive biology but adept at body language, could see it. The drone required guidance.

His systems were so charged that it prevailed over any form of emotion that was not desire and lust. Soundwave scooted backwards on his berth and turned to swing his legs over and lie down on his back. He grabbed Daniel's arm with one delicate hand to encourage him to follow. The drone did not hesitate to straddle himself over the commander's lap, hovering in case his assumptions would betray him and he would earn another warning. One of the tentacles slipped around behind Daniel and clamped onto his lower panel to find the override locks. Going for the locks had told him how much his lust had taken over his composure, because all he really needed to do was ask. Daniel opened the panel before the override could, and the thin tongues tickled the inside of his port, making him shiver.

Soundwave roamed his hands in the exact motions that the drone had, grazing over his hips and legs. He took note that Daniel was evidently weak when it came to his thighs being physically touched with such gentle care.

The girth of his tendrils was considerably thick, thicker than his own spike. With Daniel's doubts and nervousness, Soundwave knew that he couldn't test the elasticity of the other's port with these monstrous limbs. It would feel far too tight. He could rip something. As much as he wanted to tear into the drone, he was not sure if the Vehicon could make up a good fib as to why both his mind and interface had been damaged in one night without mentioning interface. He used his digits instead. They were far thinner and could serve as his measurement tools to decide if Daniel was ready for something bigger.

The drone spread his hips wider when he saw what the commander was doing. He bucked a little too soon and the digit tip scraped over his anterior node. He squeaked and shivered, unsure if he should be keeping his volume in check as well as his behavior. Soundwave didn't seem to mind or care and slid a thin finger easily into his port, down to the knuckle, adding a second one when he felt confident enough that the other could handle it. His other hand was placed on Daniel's hip with his digits digging into the armor.

The Vehicon's processor melted away to bliss. He reached up a hand to touch himself over the outlines of the glass on his chest. Soundwave would have smacked it away and done it himself if he wasn't so preoccupied with getting Daniel heated and wet enough. He watched him, staring, wondering where exactly on that section of his body was so sensitive that it was the drone's urge to touch there. The tendril that had managed to loop itself around the employed servo slid forward to press itself softly against the glass enamel itself. There was no obvious reaction. The sensitivity was in the seam. It snaked upwards to trace the hidden framing across, down, across again to follow the rectangular pattern. Daniel tossed his head back and moaned as he bounced on the digits probing his port. Soundwave felt a new rush of heat flow down to his spike, and within him an amused sense of pride swelled now that he had figured out a second weak spot. The closed head moved back and forth along the line. The drone shivered and jerked awkwardly. His hand grabbed the offending tendril, but that was all he could really do. He did not dare discourage it from touching him some more.

Soundwave looked down to see his progress. There was a trail of lubricant leading down the back of his hand to his wrist. He moved the two digits in circles, and Daniel subconsciously moved with them. He took them out half an inch and spread them. The drone didn't seem to be in any pain. One more inch, to spread them wider. A louder moan, and a hiss as something beneath Daniel's cab relieved pressure that enabled Soundwave to easily scissor the other's port a bit more.

The commander removed the probing digits. Daniel looked down, silently pleading as he groped himself to keep his rhythm going. Soundwave placed both of his hands on either side of the drone and pushed down. The Vehicon understood and nodded. He shuffled his knees forward. Soundwave used one hand to hold his spike and position it as Daniel met him halfway. The warm pressure that he felt as he was gradually inching his way into the drone's port, accompanied by the quaking moans and groans that was music to his receptors, nearly made him strangle Daniel with the appendages that coiled and crisscrossed his frame. The drone tugged at the thick, constricting cables to test his range of motion as he sank himself down.

As the drone moved, Soundwave's head leaned back and his hips slowly arced up to bury himself inside. Daniel turned into a whimpering mess. He was bucking with the commander's full length inside of him. He couldn't keep his back straight, so he dropped forward on hands and knees, scraping and thrusting. He glanced up at Soundwave for any kind of reaction. The silent mech remained wholly still, except for the shallow pulses of his hips.

It wasn't that Soundwave was not finding any pleasure in this; he was generally unsure what to do next. So far, he had been acting according to Daniel's movements, responding to touch him when and where it seemed necessary. It had been a long time since he had a berth partner, and he never remembered having one act so submissive as this. It was always the extra limbs that had done the work. People were either turned on or frightened by them, there was no such thing as indifference about them. They saved him a lot of work by exploring into the other's mind and work out what they wanted. He did not have that luxury this time. He was determined not to resort to it. He was reading body language alone. Even still, he could tell Daniel was holding back for the sake of Soundwave's request to mind their social standings. It was an interfering variable in his experiment.

The tendrils tightened. Daniel gave out a gasp and his port clenched. Soundwave's frame shuddered from the sensation. He wondered to himself if his spike alone was too little stimulation for the drone. He tilted his head back up to look at him. Either Daniel was too restrained to move or he was also uncertain on what to do from here. The commander ran his hands up the drone's arms, over his shoulders, until he reached his neck. He held the drone's jaw in the palms of his hands. Meanwhile, a tentacle was maneuvering its way back around to the Vehicon's port and squeezed itself between their joined interfaces. Daniel's visor flickered and he moaned when its closed tip pressed to his port to gauge if both extremities could fit. Soundwave moved his hips slowly, dipping his spike in and out to feel how slick the other's port was. Daniel groaned and nuzzled his face into one of the palms that held him. The drone's arm had twitched when trying to move, but the compression of coils around it prevented him. Soundwave loosened that section of constraint and the Vehicon lifted his arm to touch Soundwave's hand.

The tender moment lasted for a small second. Daniel cried out when the head of the tendril at his port started making room for itself at an incredibly slow and forgiving rate. Soundwave moved his hips expertly to ease its passage, with the lubricants on his spike sliding over the tentacle one measurement at a time as they shared the space. The commander dropped his free hand to feel the drone's aft, massaging him to encourage him and make the penetration easier.

"Commander…"

It was a title he had been called many times, but the slightest utterance of it from the purple mech had sent his drive shaft into another pitch. Somewhere beneath them, he could hear Laserbeak screeching in response. The cabling of his snakelike appendages contracted. In swift motions, he threw Daniel off and slammed him onto his back with his head at the foot of the berth. The drone whimpered pitifully and tried to close his legs, fighting the impressive strength of Soundwave's unique limbs. The commander crawled over him like a predator, first easing a tendril into the drone's port, then working to get his spike inside. Daniel cried out, repeating his rank aloud over and over, getting both of them revved.

Soundwave put a hand against the drone's helm and bent his head down in a way that, if he had only removed his visor, he would have bitten the other's neck. Having the visor still on suffocated him. His face was hot from the fumes that was cycled into this restricted space. To him, it didn't matter. Both his suffering and the drone's suspension had him in raging lust.

"Commander…! Commander Soundwave!"

The silent mech's tentacle and spike worked at asynchronous rhythms to falsify the sensation of two mechs plowing into Daniel's valve. The Vehicon, despite his reluctance earlier to make any significant noise, abandoned that resignation and kept screaming out until his release. Soundwave could feel the other's charge dissipate throughout his body, but his own was still in high capacity. Daniel had already gone limp as the commander kept grinding himself into the drone.

"C-Commander, please…" the drone whispered. "It hurts…"

Soundwave straightened his back and leaned up to get a better and fuller view of the mech tangled within his coils. His free tendril looped around to its master and clamped over his abdomen. Through the physical connection, he sent small waves of electricity, one after the other, and the current made its way down to the right sensory receptors to help him reach an overload faster. He cursed himself, telling himself that if he had only held back then Daniel could have lasted a minute or two longer so they would overload together.

Even with his lust satiated, Soundwave kept himself inside of the Vehicon, thrusting lightly and slowly to get every inch of pleasure that was left. The twists of cabling around Daniel went slack. Even the tendril in his port had ceased moving. The drone shifted, looking comfortable in the chaotic muddle of thick wiring.

With this experiment of his completed, he allowed them to link up again. His tentacle disconnected from his midsection to crawl over Daniel's frame and jolted into the atlas port. With their systems overheated and minds a mess of raw feeling, thoughts passed easily between them with no pause between soliloquies. It was hardly a coherent conversation on Daniel's part, but Soundwave could respond easily.

_So those things really don't cum. _[_Feelers are designed for data transfer and breaching, not reproduction._] _It was longer than two minutes. _[_You felt exquisite._]_ I think I found about three new kinks I like. _[_A common statement._] _Was I allowed to speak the entire time? _[_Yes._] _Can we do this more often? _[_Yes._]

Soundwave severed the connection. He had answered without thinking. He answered based on his current emotion. He only expected this encounter once. He never planned on another. What he wanted was to explore the drones' secret behaviors, starting with this one. To end up trapped in a more personal relationship had not been considered. As his tendrils found their strength, sliding over Daniel's body to disentangle themselves, the drone relaxed with a sigh.

"I'll be sure to remain on standby, sir," he said with a flash of his red visor.

He kept silence between them, which made Daniel feel uncomfortable and again unsure of his conduct. When the extra limbs had locked back into their housing, Soundwave pulled the drone up to his knees to press the lower end of his screen to the underside of the Vehicon's chin. Daniel took it as another invitation of intimacy and ran his digits up and down the back of Soundwave's helm.

[_Stay the night._]

At this point, Daniel didn't care if it was a suggestion or a command. "As you wish, sir."

Soundwave pulled him in to lie down on the berth. To Daniel it seemed an uncharacteristically cute gesture of the commander to hold him tight like he was a comfort object, with his face buried in his chest. The feelers left their housing again and wrapped around them both. He heard three clicks and a hiss, then a voiceless sigh. With his mind fuzzy with post-orgasmic stimulation, he could not piece together the fact that the commander was only keeping him this close to hide his face when he finally took his visor off to breathe easier.

Before he drifted off into recharge, a clang from beneath the berth had temporarily stirred Soundwave's senses. He smiled to himself as Laserbeak assured him through their deep telepathy that he had accidentally fallen out of the semidome bed after experiencing the discharge his master had felt. The avian did not bother with exerting itself to get back up. He would stay on the floor until morning.

xXx

Literally my favorite part of this whole chapter is when Dan tries to be cute and Soundwave shuts him down.


	6. Chapter 6

Strap in, it's a long one.

Bringin' in the events of the Aligned novels for a theory! We're now taking place during Flying Mind, as you'll see, and I hope I've done it some justice without interfering much with the dialogue.

* * *

Chapter VI

Daniel woke up mildly panicked the next morning in the berth with his commanding officer. He feared most of all that Soundwave could have rifled through his memories while he was sleeping and never known about it. As a ranked member of drones, he valued his privacy. But, also as a ranked member of drones, he was not allowed the privilege of privacy as often as he would have liked.

They seldomly spoke. Soundwave offered that Daniel shower first and do it quickly so they could get to their shifts without any suspicion. Daniel said it would be even more suspicious if it was Soundwave who was off his schedule. His input made sense. The commander scrubbed and buffed as fast as he could, and hurried out of his room without another word to the waiting drone.

Daniel felt awkward having to use the shower. It was not built the same as the showers he knew, which was a room full of rows of stalls made for the massive army. The showerhead was not a wand; it was installed in the form of racks in the roof, and the purified substance poured like a gentle waterfall. The flowing rinse was soothing compared to the spraying jet he was used to.

In this solitude and silence, under the calm, trickling wash, the storm of his mind stirred to action. He felt his spark sink to the floor as he thought about what sort of secrets Soundwave would uncover after violating his mind. He worried over the potential disruption of safety that the drones worked carefully to construct and maintain. Daniel went down on his knees as the hot water flowed over his shoulders and down his back to wash away traces of suds and muck. He pulled himself together when he believed he was wasting time worrying over both the inevitable and other matters he no longer had control over.

When he had turned off the flow, he noticed there was no towel to use. He stared at the command buttons on the wall until he figured out which one was the blow-dry feature. He spent a few seconds with his head up and his arms out, turning around if it would help dry off more angles on his frame. There were a few water spots left, and he hoped that they could dry out naturally before anyone would notice, if anyone cared. The only one who would care enough was Elias. He was always so incredibly nosy when it came to where Daniel was and what he was doing most of the time. The Vehicon passed it off as worry.

He snuck off towards the medical bay. Ozzy and Lonni would be concerned for his tardiness to work, and would give him a quick questioning about it. He needed to think of some excuse. A restrained truth would work. His processor was damaged, after all, so he went to the med bay for a quick scan, a prescription, a cool drink, and came right back to decoding. Only a vigilant and bored drone watching the monitors would wonder why Daniel had come from a wing where no drone slept.

* * *

A few days had passed. The army gained a substantial number of members, thanks to a mysterious awakening of a hive of Insecticons on Earth. Ozzy, an ever-expanding mind of random information, had theories on what caused them to stir now instead of years ago when the Decepticons first arrived. One was that the awakening of Unicron that triggered something. And the theory that had others laughing and shaking their heads was the idea that the rogue Airachnid was perhaps an Insecticon queen and called them to action. Poor Ozzy actively dug through files to prove his point and managed to find a surgical record dated at the start of the war with her name on it. He spent a few hours going through Shockwave's audio logs until he found the bit he wanted. The Insecticon hive was unruly and unmanageable without a leader, and too much infighting for the title was causing too many deaths. Shockwave would have their minds linked to one commanding processor, but the trouble was finding someone compatible to the invasive installation. None of the "volunteers" survived the hivemind drive implant. But the willing participant, the only femme, an Arachnicon descendant, had. This was all the proof the drone needed to show the others that Airachnid was, by all definition, the Insecticon Queen.

Ozzy, and many others, still preferred his Unicron theory.

As the day went on, Daniel realized that Soundwave was keeping a distance from him on purpose. Not a physical distance, but emotional. They only spoke when it was relevant to their work. The drone had assumed that the officer was doing this to maintain a solid professional relationship and disregard the sexual interactions as anything other than two mechs trying to get a charge off. The fun was over. It was time to get back to business.

No commanding officer was around. Megatron had spent a good deal of yesterday and dedicated all of today to figuring out how to fix the warship and get it off the ground before the Autobots thought of a way to take advantage of the situation. Soundwave was called upon to help with the simulations and diagnostics. If anything was calculated incorrectly, Soundwave was the one to pick up on it. The drones he chose as assistants for Project: Iacon were trusted to work alone on decoding while he was out. News passed quickly through the Eradicons' underground frequencies that Lord Megatron was planning on using dark energon to control and repair the ship. It seemed what Daniel passed off as gossip was turning out to be true; something in the air had changed just before their terminal screens locked up with continuous error codes.

"Trypticon…" Ozzy moaned pitifully as he stared up at the screen.

"Trypticon?" Daniel asked as his colleague whimpered.

"It hasn't been called that in an age." Ozzy's frame shook with fear. "I'm not that old, but Tone told me what he knew and I had to look into it. You know me, always curious."

"Try to dumb it down for us, chatterbox," Lonni sneered. "You know your mind moves faster than your mouth."

"The old High Council on Cybertron hid dark energon here for testing, when it was a simple orbiting station. We seized it, Shockwave was told to experiment on it, and..." He touched his own claws, a fidgeting sign of his nerves acting up. "He used the station itself as a subject."

"So, this… station… It's been brought to life by dark energon before?" Daniel asked, trying to get the short version. But the short version seemed to cause him more confusion.

"No. Worse. This station's been _given_ life before by the sparks of the scientists Shockwave mutilated when keeping the original crew as his subjects. The collective of consciousness granted it a perverted birth."

"Wait a Primus-damned tick!" Lonni shouted. "We've been piloting a graveyard throughout space for centuries, and I'm just now finding out about it?!"

"Will you let me tell the story!"

Something reverberated and shook them out of their balance. The ship was repairing itself and getting ready for an immediate liftoff.

"If Lord Megatron's truly infused the core of the ship with dark energon," Ozzy continued with alarm, "this ship may have been reanimated!"

"We're inside a fucking Terrorcon body!"

"Keep it together, Lonni!" Daniel barked. "Nothing's threatened us, we're not under fire; we're still alive and functioning. So, throw it in park and just—"

"_Autobots sighted_," said a drone over their intercoms. "_Port bow, grounded. Engaging._"

"Ozzy, listen, before you start freaking out again, we're airborne. We're fine."

* * *

"I didn't realize the ship was equipped with a stasis beam," Knockout said with singing surprise.

Neither had anyone else, for that matter. Soundwave was familiar with the weapons system of the _Nemesis_, had known every spec and every compatibility. Stasis beams were good for short-range weaponry, not incredible distances like the miles that separated the ship from the Autobots down below. The idea of its installation was played with thousands of years ago, but its reliability was risky, and so the _Nemesis _went without it.

Soundwave's optics darted to Megatron to scan for a change in his posture in response to Knockout's comment. He adjusted himself ever so slightly. Yes, even Lord Megatron was taken aback by the knowledge.

"It's not," he uttered lowly, sounding a little too unsure but mightily suspicious about this new information.

The beam switched targets to the next closest moving Autobot. The shot immobilized the big green ex-Wrecker named Bulkhead. Soundwave turned his head to see who was manually controlling the targeting system of this hidden gem of a weapon. The drones were scrambling at the monitors, trying to fix the red error screens. No one in the control room was directing the weapons. No one in the control room had access. So, what was guiding it? Who was pulling the trigger?

"Down for the count!" the medical officer shouted enthusiastically.

Soundwave turned back around to see on the large wall of a monitor that the beam had just taken out Optimus Prime mid-air, locking his joints and servos into place. The Prime fell straight to the dirt.

[_Lord Megatron, the ship has never been retrofitted with a stasis beam in the course of its commission._]

He sent the message to Megatron alone. He even provided a data package listing all added and removed major components regarding weaponry systems that had been put into maintenance throughout the long age of the _Nemesis' _active service under Decepticon command. He knew Megatron wasn't about to shift through tons of data on the spot, but he knew that by having an extensive record of it that there was proof the trusted communications officer had done his homework. The warlord was about to respond before the cameras picked up on something the Prime was holding.

"The Spark Extractor!" He ordered the control deck, "Guide us closer so that I may collect what belongs to me, and destroy the Autobots."

Soundwave's head tilted as something within the database had changed. A piece of Project: Iacon had been decoded and came up on a monitor. He smiled to himself and extended a long-range link to Daniel, connecting his psychic ability with his intercom.

[_Well done to you and your team on decoding a full set of coordinates._]

"_That… wasn't us, sir. We currently have no access to any of the systems._"

The ship changed its course. Soundwave looked to see that the _Nemesis_ was not moving towards the Autobots but away, against Lord Megatron's commands.

"What?" Megatron gasped. His confusion was quickly replaced by fuming anger. "Where are you going? I said closer!"

"Lord Megatron, the ship seems to be navigating itself," one of the drones said with an impressively calm tone considering the circumstances implied in that sentence alone.

"Override," the warlord growled, stressing the syllables. Something close banged and caused the room to shift. The ship continued on its rogue course. Megatron snarled and turned to face the drone who was working furiously at the controls. Now that the drone had spoken, he was a target, and he was determined to gain favor once more before his lord and master was in the mood to make an example of him.

"The systems are bypassing manual contro—Aaugh!"

A visible electric current surged through the drone's body as he screamed. Smoke from fried circuitry escaped through the open points of his armor. His frame went limp and he fell to the floor with a clang. The bridge was silent for a moment.

"It appears the ship now possesses a will of its own," Knockout stated, his voice laced with urgency.

"Impossible," Megatron hissed. "Trace the problem to its source and fix it!"

"DO NOT TAMPER WITH MY SYSTEMS."

* * *

Lonni had taken apart the console panel so they could crawl inside to see if it was a physical problem that was not allowing them access to the ship's mainframe when the unknown voice boomed throughout every room and hall.

"Who was that?" Ozzy asked.

Lonni touched a wire. They were electrocuted instantly and went slack. Half of their body was still inside the hatch, but Daniel and Ozzy were hesitant to touch them to pull them back out.

"THIS WILL BE YOUR ONLY WARNING."

"I think Trypticon's back online," Daniel murmured. "Is Lonni still alive?"

Ozzy took a long moment to eyeball it. "Their hull's moving. I think they're okay."

* * *

On the bridge, the commanding officers looked around to find the source of the voice. The demanding reverberation sounded like it was using the ship's intercoms on each channel for each hall and room, making the decibel range loud enough to pound one's processor.

"Warning?" Megatron demanded.

"MY MISSION ASSUMES PRIORITY. ANY CYBERTRONIAN WHO INTERFERES WILL BE NEUTRALIZED."

"My own vessel dares to address me in threatening tones?!"

Soundwave silently pointed to a nearby monitor, stretching out his EM field to grab the other officers' attention to look at it. Knockout was the one to voice his theory aloud as he approached the terminal.

"It also seems to be doing a better job of decoding the Project: Iacon database than we were. It's already deciphered a new set of coordinates."

Soundwave, who was thankful that a wireless link to the mainframe had not shorted him out, brought up the coordinates on his facial screen to show the others the ship's trajectory in accordance to the numbered set.

"And judging by our current course, that is precisely where the ship is headed," Dreadwing stated for him.

"As I desire…" Megatron said thoughtfully. "You see, this warship is nothing more than an extension of my very will."

"YOUR WILL IS NOTHING. THE IACON ARTIFACT WILL BELONG TO _ME_."

"I am Lord Megatron!" the warlord bellowed. "I command you to cease operations!"

"YOU ARE NO LONGER IN COMMAND…"

Above their heads, a web of electricity centered to the dark light on the ceiling and emitted a certain frequency specific to Megatron's operating systems. The warlord went down on a knee and cried once in pain as he held his helm in his hands. Knockout went over to him, ready to assess and aid. Both Dreadwing and the medic looked at him in worry. Soundwave, past his tinted visor, was staring in abject horror, thinking of countless ways the ship could destroy them all if it had so desired and calculating many other ways to combat it. His simulations resulted in nothing but failures.

"Regain control of this vessel," Megatron growled, "by any means necessary."

Soundwave responded quickly before the rogue mind of the _Nemesis_ had a chance to proact to the command. He could not breach the system wirelessly, and the downed pilot had said manual override was impossible. He took a risk to use his unique limbs to connect to one of the consoles and find his way past the firewalls through his own psychometry. A current ran up the tendrils and into his body, and trapped his mind within itself.

"_You will not interfere!_"

The hivemind of the dead Trypticon scientists howled and screeched in his processor as they suffocated his psyche into a cluttered space of void. To prevent any damage to himself, and to keep the expansive collection of minds from controlling his body through his psychic ability, he crashed over half of his drives.

His body relaxed. The others looked on in shock that their top data infiltrator, the one person whom they could have relied on for a counterattack and regain systematic control, was indeed neutralized.

"All hands!" Megatron shouted as he opened a wide link to his on-board army. "Cut power to the mainframe and disconnect data relays, now!"

* * *

"You think the Hub's still unaffected?" Ozzy muttered.

"I would hope to _every _god I _ever_ read about from _every_ culture we've got data on, even the ones that we _made up_ for a story, that this monster did _not_ infect the Hub!"

"Sounds like a heavy prayer. You think any of them will listen?"

"Depends on if we take action." He grabbed Ozzy's arm and led him outside to the hall, thankful that the door was working at all. "We do as Lord Megatron says: Disconnect power."

"You saw what happened to Lonni. If we touch anything, we get zapped."

"Who said anything about touching?" Daniel's arm shifted to expose his blaster.

Down the hall, Dreadwing was leading a team of drones to another room, looking like they were about to engage a squad of Autobots. Daniel offered to go another direction, to get to the server room and start blowing wires close to the source of all data.

"Just be sure to avoid taking out the FOS so we stay in the air."

"You think I know which server contains the flight operating system? No!"

"You're Oz. You're smart."

"You're Dan. You know the ins and outs of the system better than I do. You're the drone equivalent of Commander Soundwave, as far as anyone's concerned. I'm just a walking encyclopedia of trivia."

At a crossroad junction, they ran into a team of mixed drones and Insecticons.

"Found yourself a pet, Absalom?" Daniel teased. In this tense situation they were all in, he was hoping a bit of humor might calm them down.

"His name's Butterscotch and he likes it when you talk to him like a normal person," one of the drones scoffed. The aforementioned Insecticon chittered. Daniel could swear it was smiling.

"Slag's going sideways and up tailpipes without the decency to lube up first," said another drone. It was Dallas, one of their oldest. "You'll want as much muscle as you can muster. We're off to the refinery to make sure the ship's not infecting it with dark energon, and blowing the machines if they are. What about you?"

"Server room."

"Going straight to the processor. Deadly. Should've figured that'd be your go-to plan."

One of the two Insecticons screeched. All of the group's attention turned to what it was yelling at. A wall of crisscrossed stasis beams was sliding its way up the hall towards them. The drones and insectoids panicked and dashed, trying to run faster than the rate at which the wall was catching up. Dallas had turned for a moment to shoot at it, likely thinking he was going to blast a hole through it, but his shot fizzled as it hit the lasers. As the group came to a T-shaped intersection, Butterscotch scooped with a large arm to shove three of the drones into the oncoming hall. It had been just in time, too. The two Insecticons and the other drones were frozen as the wall passed through them.

The survivors stared at their comrades, each wondering if they were still active in their immobile shells. Ozzy started to panic, and Daniel was trying to keep his voice level. Absalom kept his optics glued to Butterscotch, who was rendered paralyzed in the exact moment he had saved their hides a moment longer from the inevitable.

"Fuck!"

"Ozzy."

"We're all going to die, aren't we!"

"Ossen!"

"This is for our ultimate sin! We lied to our masters! We hide our true selves for the sake of self-preservation, and for what! We're wicked! We're fraudsters! This is our punishment! We—!"

Absalom was out of his trance because of Ozzy's screaming and slapped him. The whimpering drone stopped talking. Daniel grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

"Listen to me, OZ-5392," he said sternly, "now is not the time to be having a mental episode. We don't have room for another one of your philosophical ramblings, not here, you understand me? The ship is under attack. Say it back to me."

"The-ship-is-under-attack…" Ozzy had said it so quietly and so fast that the entire sentence sounded like one long, whispered word.

"The _Nemesis_ is under siege by an unseen enemy. Think of it like a virus. We have orders to cut off this virus from multiple operating systems. How do we do that?"

"Server room."

"That's right, we get to the server room."

"But what about—"

"I'll slap you again if you give him an excuse," Absalom said, putting up a flat hand.

"It has access to cameras," Ozzy insisted. Absalom was about to backhand him when Daniel lifted an arm to stop him. "It knows where we're going, it can hear us right now. It knows our plan. It, no. They! It's a they! Plural! Those cursed souls! Those who wouldn't align with our cause! They're avenging themselves, their robbed life! There's no escape!"

Daniel let go so Absalom could hit Ozzy once more. The drone nearly passed out, but he was shaken awake again.

"You aren't fit to continue on," Daniel stated.

"No, please…"

"You're raving. Find somewhere safe to hide. Don't touch anything and the ship might let you live."

"Trypticon will kill you."

"Who the hell's Trypticon?" Absalom asked. At the same moment, loud grating and shifting could be heard around them.

"We have to hide," Ozzy whispered.

"We have orders," Daniel snarled.

"They're impossible orders."

"If I have to listen to one more excuse out of your whining vocoder, I'll be sure Harrison sends you down for mapping excavation lines and you'll have very limited access to the Hub from there."

"Anywhere but this haunted craft, Daniel, please!"

A bolt of purple energy shot him from above. Ozzy was still. Not a scream, not a whimper, not a single noise was made from the ship's new victim. Absalom and Daniel looked at each other in silence.

"Dan…?"

"Move."

Both of them transformed, wheels and wings, to race down the hall with another wall of stasis beams at their backs. Another appeared directly in front of them to box them in, and they barely had enough time to transform back to their bipedal modes before the two walls crossed them. The sensation of instant paralysis caused his spark to jolt as his motor systems locked into place.

In his frozen state, Daniel heard the ship's dark voice responding to a communications frequency that did not come from any Decepticon.

"MEGATRON HAS BEEN RELIEVED OF HIS COMMAND."

"_Who is this?_"

"WHO IS _THIS_?"

Daniel recognized the caller as the Autobots' medic, Ratchet, the only one who had not been present when the _Nemesis_ had acted in its own self-defense.

"_Have you taken control of the Decepticon vessel?_"

"I _AM_ THE VESSEL."

The drone was not sure how to feel about this. For one, he was hoping that Trypticon was tracing the signal to locate the Autobot base. For another, he hoped the Autobots were thinking about coming aboard to rescue the ship. After all, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," and he prayed Trypticon was an Autobot enemy.

"ANY CYBERTRONIAN WHO INTERFERES WITH MY MISSION WILL BE NEUTRALIZED."

"_What mission?_"

"PRIORITY ONE: DECRYPT IACON DATABASE AND RECOVER DECEPTICON TECHNOLOGY."

"_For what purpose?_"

There was a two-second delay before Trypticon disconnected.

Daniel tried reaching out to Absalom, who had been paralyzed in the middle of his transformation and looked like a crude modern art statue. He could not speak, but maybe they could read off of each other's EM fields. He attempted to reach out and discovered his radius was restricted due to internal damage to his systems. He tried wirelessly accessing the vessel's mainframe. He could get in, but it would do him no good. If Trypticon became aware of any interfering activity, he was sure the station would use the connection to short him out for good. He checked among the systems and files to see what was happening, to watch helplessly as a bystander while others scrambled to figure out what to do next, only to share the same fate. He saw the camera feed to the core, and Lord Megatron frozen with his hand on the injection switch.

What about the other officers? Dreadwing was in a hall. His position suggested he had the same idea as Daniel and was running to get to the server room. Knockout was passed out at a terminal, face down on the keyboard. Soundwave was standing idly in the center of the control bridge with his tentacles latched onto a console.

The drone had an idea. He focused all of his power to digging through systems to get to that relay. Maybe if Soundwave was still awake, still online, strong enough to use his psionic abilities, he could reach out…

* * *

Despite all of his unnatural powers, Soundwave had never seen the perceived construct of his own mentality. He had noticed, when performing the procedure Shockwave coined a "cortical psychic patch" on others, the mind understood the location of their immediate awareness as a dark room with a singular light. Anything brought to the forefront of their attention came forth either like a screen or a complete change in the environment, taking it from another "room" unseen.

Soundwave's mind was far different. Instead of a dark room unnoticeably wired to other rooms, it was an illuminated expanse. All data that he had ever recorded, observed, analyzed, and stored was here for immediate use. His mind never had to dig far for the information, and memories rarely decayed below eighty-percent intactness. Data was everywhere; above and below, an endless and unfathomable ocean. He would have enjoyed the experience if it were not for the terrifying presence of hundreds of ghosts infiltrating it.

He remembered Trypticon's history: A monument to scientific development performed off-world, a station orbiting around Cybertron like another moon. Starscream seized it early in the war, hoping it would serve him as a bargaining chip. Soundwave knew it was a power move that Lord Megatron never fell for. Megatron had Starscream tell him the secret of Trypticon Station, and its secret was dark energon. This was the world's first true experience with the forbidden substance. Megatron enhanced his best squadrons with it. Super soldiers, unyielding and determined and ravenous. You could chop all the limbs off of one of these infected Decepticons and they would find a way to crawl with their denta. They destroyed pitilessly, tirelessly, until their reserves ran low and they were starving for more. Megatron sought to gain control of the Plasma Energy Chamber and, with it, would corrupt Cybertron's core and multiply his malicious resource by converting natural energon to its darker property. He would have contaminated the entire planet. The Autobots had infiltrated the chamber right after the injection and purified the core.

Trypticon's birth was the result of a side project Shockwave had been working on. When Megatron lost the battle to gain an unlimitless supply dark energon, he asked the scientist to apply his research. The sparks of the captured scientists were infused to the station's core, allowing it to become a titan. It could even transform. It would have been a magnificent city-leveler, five times greater than that of the combiner Devastator. Its glory was short-lived, however. As the _Ark_ took off from the surface, Trypticon became the battleship that was now the _Nemesis_. The stress from following the Autobots through the unstable space bridge had disabled the many weak sparks that kept what was left of the old scientific crew alive.

Their second deaths had been alright with Soundwave. The frequency that the multitude of sparks had given off during its brief sentience had given him an atrocious headache.

He had shoved all of that history aside. Now he was tackling with these spirit-forms of mechs who had no business roaming through his psyche. As individuals physically controlling the ship outside this space, they were strong. But this was Soundwave's mind, his own turf, and they, as Terrorcons, were not equipped to deal with the mental stress and anguish he placed on them. They put up a good fight, inflicting him with the memories and pain of the experiments Shockwave did on them. In the past, they would crash their own systems only to be stirred awake by some stimulating chemical. They refused to consume energon to stay alive, but Shockwave transfused it into their bloodstream. He liked working without anesthetic (the drug was called an "unnecessary variable"). He was a sadist. He was a scientist first, a murderer just the same. An exemplar of psychopathy, that Shockwave.

Soundwave laughed at these mechs as they poured their sob stories in a poor attempt to get him to feel sympathy. He was fully aware of Shockwave's mental instability. Coupled with a trait of genius and the two aspects made a brutal and fascinating marriage of the scientist's nature. At some point, Soundwave was even able to convince Shockwave for him to poke around in his mind to see what other sorts of wildly cruel ideas he had in there and find out what made him so eccentric (for lack of a kinder euphemism). The mad scientist had always been interested in how Soundwave's biology allowed him to fundamentally hack another mech's mind, and he was willing to be subjected to that experiment in the name of scientific development and, to a greater extent, Decepticon interrogation techniques. The mad scientist gathered enough information on Soundwave's genetics to replicate the technology of the psychic patch.

The communications officer had not endured the pain the Trypticon scientists had felt when he was placed under the knife. Megatron made it absolutely clear that the torture of Soundwave would be the death of Shockwave. It was unimaginably beneficial for one's health to have the warlord's favor.

And today, before Megatron had infused the ship with dark energon, Soundwave had told him there were several situations he calculated in which the sparks of the dead mechs would rekindle. Lord Megatron, stubborn through and through, was confident the dark energon of his own spark would take command over the feeble minds of ancient corpses, as he had done so before with an entire world's population of undead Cybertronians. Considering the possible existence of a multiverse, there is at least one universe out there where that theory would have worked and Trypticon would once again be a massive weapon to use against the Autobots.

The Decepticons of this world were not as fortunate here.

Never tell Megatron "I told you so." It makes him mad. Or, since he is usually mad anyway, it makes him a raging beast hellbent on smashing your face against the wall as an example to other doubtful witnesses never to sass him publicly. Right now, Soundwave, in his frustration to wipe these invaders from his mind, wanted to get out of this hell, jolt himself to Megatron's atlas, and stream all of these experiences, full sensory activated, to make a point that reanimating Trypticon was a bad slagging idea from the beginning and they should never consider doing it again.

A few of the mechs entangled in his mental frame had the capacity for words. They all had the same ideas and kept up a frantic conversation:

"_We will recover the Decepticon relics, take them out of the world._" "_This war has lasted long enough._" "_Both sides will destroy the universe if either get their hands on the relics._" "_Priority: Decode the database._" "_Three coordinates have so far been decoded._" "_We have to destroy the relics._" "_Or use them to destroy the Autobots and Decepticons. Cybertronians have wasted their existence, they're useless._" "_Then why keep the crew alive?_" "_Ships need crews._""_We just need them to comply and retrieve the relics._" "_We have company._" "_Company?_"

"_Commander!_"

Soundwave thought he must have been hallucinating at last. That couldn't have been Daniel. That was some other voice wandering around in the ocean of his mind. He ignored it, taking another compilation of foreign code and shattering it, ridding the universe of another undead for good. He scanned for the next closest unwelcome psyche. He came across something that was far more intact than the others. He transferred into the sector to get closer to it. It was… certainly alien looking. It wasn't Cybertronian in the least; it looked organic, but it wasn't human. Pure white skin, golden markings, horns, red eyes, yellow hair… What was this thing doing in his mind? Was it from his memory core? Was it a scientist trying to disguise itself?

"Commander!" it shouted. "Thank Primus, it didn't kill you."

"Order: Recite designation."

The creature adopted the same obsequious posture the Eradicon army had programmed into them, with a fist to his chest. "Serial designation, D4N1-3L."

The vast, bright expanse of his mind flickered with the intense confusion the commander just felt.

"D4N1-3L's presence in Soundwave's mind: Impossible."

"Improbable," the white alien model corrected. "You're still mentally connected to the ship. You're not the only one synched to its systems, sir, I found my way here through another mean."

A swarm of red letters and numbers closed in around them. Soundwave focused to make a space around them to push out the invader and simultaneously sent the attacker into shock.

"D4N1-3L's presence in Soundwave's mind: Improbable," Soundwave corrected. He sized the form in front of him, scanning him over. "Explanation regarding both presence and appearance: Required."

"After we make it out of here."

"Query: D4N1-3L has a plan?"

"I… didn't think I'd get this far, sir."

Another cluster, another form. The drone and the commander stood back-to-back to scan all sides. Daniel's form reached around to touch Soundwave's shoulder. The blue-grey mech felt something being duplicated from his archives.

"Mind if I borrow this for a bit?"

A memory sprang from Soundwave's subconscious, a gladiator match from eons ago, before he even heard the name Megatronus. He was battling an atrociously mutated mech and grabbed a long spear from the depths of his subspace…

…and Daniel pulled it straight through the coding to make it a tangible weapon in the matrix of his psyche. He slashed forward to split the form of a poor Trypticon victim, but it sewed itself back together. One of Soundwave's tendrils turned on it to administer an anti-viral string of data and it disappeared.

"Guess I'm not as good at this as I thought, sir," Daniel said with dejected humor.

"Trypticon scientists: Not physical."

"It worked in movies and books."

"Entertainment media: Unreliable sources for combat application."

"I gathered that."

"D4N1-3L's mental sustainability: At risk within Soundwave's mind."

"We're in between as far as I can tell, sir. I couldn't have gotten here if you weren't still connected to the mainframe."

"Orders: Leave Soundwave's mind and gather reports on the current state of the _Nemesis_."

"All other officers are disabled, sir," Daniel said, taking advantage of his time here and now. He straightened into a soldier's pose as he gave the report. "Lord Megatron tried to purge the energon injection valve, but he's paralyzed. Lieutenant Dreadwing was the closest to getting to the server room to disconnect the relays, but he's immobilized. Most of the crew is scrambled."

"Requesting additional information: Medical Officer Knockout's status."

"In stasis, sir."

"Report: Received and understood. Orders: Leave."

"If you please, sir, I can't just leave you here alone."

"Orders: Leave Soundwave's mind."

"And go be trapped in my own body?"

Soundwave just about screamed. The rage he felt affected the frame of his mind, turning the blue and purple space red and yellow for a long moment. Daniel hunched, trying to protect himself from whatever attack this was. The commander huffed as the color returned to normal.

"D4N3-1L's safety: Compromised within Soundwave's subconscious framework. Psyche location preference: Remain within own body."

They stared at each other for several seconds. Soundwave was looking over this strange face that Daniel seemed to have taken on while transferring over. As a mech who had no face to begin with, he was terrible at managing to hide the expressions. There was a look of unadulterated worry and fear. Soundwave thought the Vehicon's abstract model was about to cry. Daniel snapped into a soldier's salute. His tone was professional, but his face remained unchanged.

"As you wish, Commander Soundwave."

Daniel's alien form shimmered as he pulled himself out, and Soundwave helped push as much of Daniel as he could from his mind so nothing was broken when it made its way back to where it belonged. He prayed that this dangerous journey had not damaged the drone's mind, but he feared it may have already been, given what his appearance was. This was factored as a possible variable of his investigation.

All around him, the Trypticon scientists howled in unison: "_I AM INFESTED WITH ALIEN LIFEFORMS!_"

With all of them active at once, Soundwave got a read on all of their foreign signatures. He worked quickly to take them out, one at a time. He had the idea to split himself and cover more ground, but tearing oneself apart like that could be catastrophic.

He held out until, suddenly, the foreign entities had all disappeared on their own. He ran a self-scan four times over, five times to be safe, six to be absolutely sure. Trypticon had been subdued. But how? Soundwave cycled through the camera system while he pulled himself back into his frame as he looked for the heroes, getting his psyche out of the mainframe as quickly as he could. He cycled back through the last five minutes on every feed, every hallway and room, and at last saw something interesting happen in the refueling core. The Autobots' humans had gotten on board and managed to purge the dark energon from the ship's core by tricking Trypticon.

Resourceful little creatures, these humans were. He almost felt sorry that their fate was predetermined once the Decepticons won the war. Perhaps if they would neglect their annoying, selfless patriotism for an opportune moment, the Decepticons might consider enlisting a few. After all, the fact was that if the humans had never arrived, the _Nemesis_ and its Trypticon ghost crew would be ripping the planet apart for relics, and the Decepticon army would remain hostage in their own forms for Primus knows how long. And, disregarding the technology of the ground bridge, the humans stopped it without Autobot assistance. No wonder Optimus Prime tended to try and ally his faction with every specie they came across. The additional strays tended to become useful.

He would deal with the information (and irksome shame) later. He needed to run multiple, deep, intensive scans on every drive and every server on board. He wanted names, to send afflicted drones and Insecticons to the med bay to assess their health. He hated to think that systemwide damage had caused a problem in the drones' mental capacities so soon after he was set on exploring their sentience.

As he ran through systems, he spotted unknown programs. He latched onto it, thinking it was Trypticon, and it leeched him into several other encrypted layers of code. These were not the leftovers of sparks. Audio files, image files, textures, archives, fonts, configurations, temp files, false maps, modulations, animations; all impractical and unnecessary. What were they doing hiding in the mainframe?

Before he could begin its purge, they vanished. They altered and transformed before they wrested themselves from his grasp and disappeared. He scanned for them again, finding nothing. It was an anomaly. He would make this another priority among his growing list. There could be no unknowns on the ship, not after the nightmare of Trypticon's reanimation.

xXx

"Trypticon" is annoying to type, honestly. But the chapter itself was a lot of fun to write. I know dark energon already has the potential to bring life to machines that previously weren't animated, but reading Transformers: Exodus gave me this wild idea and I hope it's not too far-fetched.

Shout out to Storylady35 for being totally cool in the christening of Butterscotch.


	7. Chapter 7

I'm 'bout to do it again, I'm gonna recap Triage from limited perspective for more internal dialogues.

* * *

Chapter VII

For the first time in a while, Soundwave found that his priorities had, at long last, differed from Lord Megatron's. His concern was on the health of the crew, since all of them had endured paralyzation, but Megatron was focused on the four coordinates that the hive of Trypticon decoded. The officers would be dispatched: Knockout and Soundwave in different points of North America, Dreadwing to the Antarctic, and a subservient Hardshell to an active volcano somewhere among the Mediterranean islands.

Soundwave was surprised Lord Megatron considered the Insecticons in the retrieval of the relics. There was a possibility they were still devoted to Airachnid. He saw her commanding them when Optim—_Orion Pax_ was on board. Maybe it was a test to where the bugs' loyalties were. Still, it was too sensitive a mission. Soundwave would have questioned it, but that would be picking an unwanted fight.

There were other assumptions on Hardshell's involvement. Lord Megatron wanted to prove his command over the Insecticons, wanted to _test _that command, he was recovering from Trypticon's attack and was in no condition to go himself, or he simply had faith that the job could be done unsupervised.

Laserbeak tore him out of his thoughts. Something on their radar blipped as they flew through the air towards the location of the first relic. An Autobot vessel was flying a short mile in front of them. He increased his thrust to catch up. His symbiote questioned why he would throw away the element of surprise like this. Soundwave told him that a vessel that size could contain a maximum of three or four Autobots, depending on their individual builds. A possible four against two, with one of the latter two being significantly small, were terrible odds. The odds needed evening.

Soundwave fired first. The Autobots maneuvered, looping widely upside-down to swap their positions, and fired back. The Decepticon twirled. The Autobot ship followed. They danced in the air and the shots kept coming. Soundwave was certain that whatever gunner was at the controls had kept their digit pressed to the trigger in hopes that rapid ammunition would make up for their piss-poor accuracy. Laserbeak deployed, dropping beneath the ship to come up behind them and fire upon the back of the ship. The enemy vessel weaved again.

The Decepticon commander told Laserbeak to keep them busy, to dodge and find cloud cover, and to wait for an opportune moment to blow a turbine. Soundwave dipped back into the troposphere while Laserbeak kept pecking at the Autobots' backside.

He bolted for the canyon arch where the relic had been buried under ages of shifting landscape. He scanned the ground to get an exact 3D mapping of the rock and calculated the weak points in which to dig, using the spinning tips of his tendrils to carve his way towards it.

Laserbeak was enthusiastically keeping Soundwave up to date on his location as he tried to bring the Autobot ship into a curving trajectory away from the relic's known location. The excitement did not last long. Laserbeak had grown quiet to concentrate. Then suddenly a stream of frustration that could only be translated into a colorful sentence of cursing flowed from the symbiote. Soundwave asked what was wrong. Laserbeak only said that he would be fine, and he managed to damage the Autobot ship. Time was bought. The relic took priority, but the small avian drone would be unavailable. His wings were broken, his optical and audial feed were disabled. He would wait patiently for pickup when Soundwave had secured the prize.

As soon as Laserbeak severed the link to save his strength, the relic was within Soundwave's reach. The claws of a tentacle grabbed it and yanked it from its mineral prison. He raised it up to the dying light of the sunset, studying its structure to compare it with the files from the _Nemesis_ to understand what it was that he held.

The Resonance Blaster. A sonic weapon by Decepticon scientists, seized by Autobots. It had a short life of service, being utilized in incapable hands.

Someone screamed from above. Soundwave looked up to see a mech jump down from the cliff ahead of him. He sprang backwards to avoid the impact of two swords smashing down upon the rock. The Autobot—Wheeljack—sliced the air in front of him to get into a stance.

"Ya dropped something."

Soundwave looked to the tendril that had been holding the relic. The Resonance Blaster was gone. It was three hundred feet below on the ground. His claw must have loosened in reflex, to prepare for a strike, and dropped the relic.

He heard Wheeljack scrape one of his swords, bringing Soundwave's attention back to his presence. Soundwave's tendrils retreated back. He cycled a breath. It had been a long time since he was in a physical fight. His skills might be rusty, but he was confident he could match the Autobot.

Wheeljack dashed forward. Soundwave watched his shoulders, leaning from one side and the next to avoid getting hit. He spun at the third attack, hitting Wheejack's open back. The Autobot was hardly affected. Soundwave realized how much of his mass he had lost over the long millennia. Being trapped doing desk work aboard the ship had cost him the impact power his punches once had. His strength could not be relied upon for this fight, not against a sturdy Wrecker.

The white mech pivoted. His sword scraped over Soundwave's facial frame and screen, taking off thin bits of shaven metal and glass. Soundwave was frightened to think what it could have done if he had not leaned in time.

His thoughts were becoming distracting, remembering past battles instead of focusing on the one before him. He needed to analyze. A successful battle was one that was won swiftly. If he was truly out of practice, he would end up burning himself out faster than his former self was capable of if he tried his old techniques. He had to fight smarter, not harder.

The Autobot charged again. The Decepticon dodged one of the attacks, blocked the other two, and trapped a third. The sword was caught between his elbow and his torso. He hit Wheeljack's forearm to loosen the grip. A tendril lashed out and slapped the white mech at the same time, making the Wrecker stumble backwards towards the edge.

Soundwave inspected the sword in his possession. It felt heavy. His old strength was certainly gone if _this_ felt weighty. The sword had a strange curve, almost similar to that of the extinct cyber-ninjas' weaponry. He looked back at Wheeljack, wondering if he was a descendant, and if these swords had been passed down through generations of sparking. Given the Wrecker's fighting style, it certainly did not seem like his familial branch was interested in maintaining the teachings of precise and deceptive combat. Or he perhaps stole them from some museum that was destroyed in the war and liked them for their style. A lot of mechs fantasized about the cyber-ninjas back then.

He was not going to use it. The weapon was too big for him to wield and would weigh him down. He tossed it at Wheeljack. The Wrecker knocked it aside and jumped into the air for another strike. He left himself open. Soundwave's tendril lashed out to grab his face and bring him into a heavy body slam onto the rock. With the Autobot stunned, Soundwave flipped him over, keeping him pinned down with one tentacle. The other darted out. The drilling head of the second tendril threatened to tear a hole in Wheeljack's face. The Autobot snatched it, keeping a tight grip and pushing, but the cable was inching closer.

Sharp pain to the other clamp made the Decepticon commander reel back. Wheeljack had used the sharp, spinning head of the other tentacle to direct it to its twin, harming his foe in the process.

Wheeljack get to his pedes and charged forward. The next thing the commander felt was a striking blow to the front of his helm as he staggered backwards. His visor cracked when he regained himself. A web of white imperfection sprouted from the impact point.

"There I go again, shattering expectations," the Autobot said proudly.

Soundwave was a master at managing his body language so it would not betray his emotion. His face, hidden behind the dark tint, contorted into a raging hiss. He had been using Wheeljack as practice when he really should have been turning him into a grotesque effigy by now. The stakes of the battle were too high. The Autobot would not—_could_ not—get the relic under any circumstances.

The relic was just below them. He could jump for it, and end up getting blasted in midair away from the weapon. He had an idea. It would hurt, but it was smarter than letting his rage blindly strike out at the Wrecker.

The Autobot's servo shifted into a blaster and fired. Soundwave took the shots, fumbling backwards until he was close to the edge of the rock. One more hit for a quick descent.

He expected another firing shot to send him over, but this Wrecker was all about close combat. The white mech charged, driving a knee into the commander's chest and sending them both over the edge. Soundwave slammed flat on the ground, immoveable, wondering if the Wrecker had cracked anything else on his body. He turned his head to see the Resonance Blaster a few feet to his right. He just needed to get up and reach for it.

However, Wheeljack was in far better shape than Soundwave. He was already up on his pedes, standing over the Decepticon with an online blaster aimed at his face. Soundwave kept his optics locked, hoping that the Autobot would not notice the movement of his tendril slithering over towards the relic.

"Any last words?" Wheeljack asked out of propriety.

A few statements came to mind. "Get smelted" was reigning over the rest. He was tempted to break his vow for the humor of it.

"Right. Silent type."

The tentacle seized the Resonance Blaster and snaked its way around behind Wheeljack. Soundwave turned it on at one of its mid-frequencies, shutting off his own audios to shield himself from the attack. Wheeljack cried out and covered his receptors.

* * *

Laserbeak was hoping that he was keeping the Autobots distracted somehow. His audio and visuals were offline, but the rest of his senses were still active. He felt gentle, unfamiliar hands on him. They were not Soundwave's thin digits, or Knockout's sharp ones. These were thicker and rounded. They did not belong to any of the active Decepticons on Earth. It was one Autobot. Hopefully the _only_ Autobot. Were they not out here for the relic? Had they just happened to fly over? No, that was too much to hope for. The Autobots would not waste resources on perimeter sweeps when the Decepticons gave them no reason to.

He kept still. He could not see or hear, and now it was starting to feel like he couldn't… feel.

Local anesthesia. It was the Autobot medic who was handling him. Laserbeak was ready to panic, but he refused to move unless it was to warn Soundwave. Two, three, or ten Autobots—keeping at least one away from his master would help win the relic for Lord Megatron.

Something shifted in his codes. Something was changing. Laserbeak begin shaking from fear. Were the Autobots trying to rewire his programming? Were they trying to take him prisoner? The gentle hands became stern, pinning him to the ground. The avian drone let out a signal to his master, begging and screaming for his help.

* * *

Wheeljack was on the ground, defeated. He could leave. Soundwave could rise up and leave him here in the red dust. There were too many reasons not to. Obviously, the primary reason being this was an Autobot, a sworn enemy. Secondly, he cracked his visor and deserved punishment tenfold. Thirdly, the image of stringing him up among the rocks with only fuel lines and nerve wiring keeping his limbs connected to his body as they were strewn about was too sweet to not mimic in reality. He would leave a message to the other Autobots, to let them know what happens when you anger a Decepticon.

He placed the Resonance Blaster on his wrist. A near-perfect fit, like it had been made for him. Maybe it was made with him in mind, who knew? He pointed it at the downed Wrecker and adjusted the settings to its highest frequency. He was going to make Wheeljack's processor burst.

A signal came up on his screen. It originated from Laserbeak. It was a desperate cry for help. The Autobots were doing something to him and he was helpless. He needed him, quickly.

He had known a similar distress call about a thousand years ago back on Cybertron. Three small lives, three other symbiotes, crying out for his help, just like Laserbeak was doing now.

He would not relive it. He would not go through with the regret a second time.

::_Soundwave: En route to Laserbeak's location._::

Soundwave turned off the weapon, transformed, and took off to follow the signal.

When he arrived, the sun had finally set beyond the horizon. He transformed in the air, dropping down to land on his pedes. The impact almost made his shins quake. By _Primus,_ did he feel out of shape. He righted himself and scanned the area, expecting one or two more Autobots to be holding him at gunpoint. There was no residual energy from a ground bridge transport and their vessel was still here, crashed into the ground. Laserbeak's work, no doubt. There were Autobots in the area.

He walked up to the ship, hoping to see some clue of his drone. He turned with the sonic weapon raised in case this was an ambush. Laserbeak was weakly flopping on the ground. His struts were bent after being roughly handled. Soundwave walked up to the little drone.

::_You came back for me!_::

Soundwave wanted to respond, to say something like "Of course, I did." It did not feel right.

::_Emotional stability: Compromised upon Laserbeak's termination._:: That felt more appropriate. ::_Status of the relic: Intact, functional, and retrieved. Suggestion: Departure before the Autobots find courage. Orders: Dock._::

Laserbeak pre-shifted, and Soundwave helped him up to his chest-plate to fit him into the locking mechanisms. His shoulders and back tingled from the reestablished synch. He turned around to leave, but Laserbeak told him to wait.

Soundwave spun around, expecting an enemy at his backside that he could not sense. His symbiote told him he was clipped. There was a missing piece of his wing somewhere.

Both tendrils dropped out from his protoform and slid along the dirt to find the shard of Laserbeak's wing. One curved over the nearby boulder. He activated the optics on the tips of the claws. From their peripheral, he could see a red and white leg. Soundwave felt a rush of anger that was slowly layered with amusement. The Autobot was _hiding_. They were scared. Laserbeak told him it was their medic. He was the one Autobot besides Optimus Prime who could not afford to be lost. Soundwave was ready to make an example of him. But he would not know how much longer his body could take on physical stress, and Wheeljack may have already recovered, already driving his way here to regroup. Besides, the relic was secured for Lord Megatron. It was time to go, before he started picking any more pointless fights.

The other tendril snaked around, grazing Ratchet's hand, and the medic snatched it up as fast as he could. The claws clamped around the missing piece of the drone and retracted back with its twin. Soundwave transformed and took off back towards the _Nemesis_ with the Iacon relic.

* * *

"Ah… The Resonance Blaster," Megatron mused during the briefing as he held the relic in his claws hand. "Crafted by Decepticon scientists for maximum devastation.

"Soundwave, you have performed admirably." Megatron turned around to address two of his officers, Soundwave and Dreadwing. The former felt buzzed from the adrenaline rush of the fight. The latter was slowly deflating with the shame of defeat. Their master continued. "Unlike Dreadwing here, who somehow managed to lose the Apex Armor to _Starscream!_"

Dreadwing sagged wordlessly. He had no excuse. Starscream was without an army, without resources. Soundwave was unsure whether he would have preferred the Autobots to have the exoskeleton as compared to Starscream. By his calculations, either outcome was equally unfavorable.

"However," Megatron went on, "two more decrypted coordinates remain in play, and I have every confidence that Knockout and—"

Angry stomping turned their attention elsewhere. Knockout shoved a drone aside to get past and join the assembled officers. Fumes were practically radiating from his frame with his boiling temper. He looked like he had been buffed with sandpaper and chained thorns.

"Can you believe what the Autobots did to me?!" he screamed.

What _had_ the Autobots done to him, Soundwave wondered.

"Did you retrieve the relic?" Megatron snarled, caring not for scratches, dents, and other cosmetic blemishes over the importance of the possible weapons.

"No, master…" Knockout said, remembering he would get no sympathy from anyone present.

"Then I suggest you convince me of your continued usefulness by examining Laserbeak, _doctor_."

Knockout groaned his usual, "As you wish, my liege," and motioned for Soundwave to follow. Megatron went with them, ordering Dreadwing to be on standby when Hardshell reported back. The communications officer did not think it was necessary for Megatron to be around, but he stroked his own ego and assumed that Megatron having concern over him was another benefit of his favor.

In the med bay, Soundwave silently ordered Laserbeak to detach so Knockout could scan him. He refused. He felt safe in the latches. Knowing the avian was not going to change his mind, the silent mech laid himself on the angled berth. Knockout took out his scanner and waved it over Laserbeak's housing to see what all needed to be fixed. The mechanism spiked and beeped. The medic's optical ridges pressed together.

"What is it?" Megatron asked.

"An obstruction of some sort," Knockout said quizzically.

Soundwave jumped from the berth and demanded Laserbeak to detach to remove the obstruction. A seam opened to reveal a live detonation core that had breamed to life the moment the plates had shifted.

"Grenade!" Knockout panicked. He dove towards the door and went down on the floor with his hands over his head. His frame was shaking wildly as he waited for the explosion.

"Ah, that is clever," Megatron mused. "Knockout. Prepare to properly dispose of the obstruction."

Knockout scrambled to his pedes, his plates still clanking against each other with stress. Soundwave reached out his arms as though he was offering Laserbeak to him. The medic took baby steps forward, snatching the core out, and bolting out of the bay and down the hallway. Laserbeak shifted and docked again, now feeling even more anxious and stressed out about the fact that the Autobot Ratchet had rigged him with an explosive. Soundwave promised him he would talk to the drone Yovanni for something to soothe him.

"Soundwave."

His attention snapped to Lord Megatron before he could comfort his avian drone. He opened his link to address him properly.

[_My lord._]

"If we are to maintain any advantage over the Autobots—" A second interruption, an explosion near the flight deck. Megatron's optical ridge rose, wondering if he should be concerned about an attack, before quickly realizing it was the grenade that had caused the noise. He resumed his orders. "Decoding the remainder of the Iacon database must remain your top priority."

Translated, Soundwave was to work overtime. He already was, but this time he would shift his focus so it was spent more on decoding than in maintaining the ship. The drones were capable enough of handling routine tasks on their own. He would still pull in his three drones to work on the database, since they were already used to the language of the files more than anyone else.

But the drones as a whole were still working on diagnostics and would be for a while until they were sure that the ship was back to normal. He wondered if he could still pull Daniel away to eventually work on the exploration into drone sentience, or at least Daniel's perspective on it. A project not started takes the longest to finish.

Soundwave excused himself to use the rest of the working hours at a station nearby. He hooked himself to the mainframe. Now that he was relaxed, he noticed how physically tired he was. The fight had taken its toll. He should have asked Knockout to look at the blaster impacts. He should have snuck away to find a small ration to compensate for what he burned through. His head hurt. He still felt residual hate for Wheeljack, and an equal amount of hate towards Ratchet for turning his last surviving symbiote into a bomb.

His spark sank. His last symbiote…

"Oh, believe me, Soundwave _will _provide the coordinates to the remaining relics."

Megatron was talking to someone. He had not realized they had been standing there watching him. He thought he was left alone to work. He would have _preferred _to be left alone to work.

"Yes, we are fortunate to have him on our side, Lord Megatron." Knockout. He said "fortunate" forcibly. It bites at one's ego to be one of the officers showing up to report their failure. Soundwave hardly failed. A voice rang in his mind, a small voice from long ago who told all other Decepticons, "If ya want somethin' done right, ya ask Boss Soundwave."

"And see about repairing his cracked visor, will you?" Megatron said, implying the order before walking away. Soundwave did not hear Knockout's footfalls, but he heard a growl before the medic came over to his side.

"I know you're busy, Soundwave, but you heard the orders. Let me see it."

[_Later._]

Knockout stood stunned for a moment considering his conflicting instructions. The psychic order was so quick to pass through his mind that he almost believed it was his own thought.

"Only our Lord Megatron's orders trump yours, now come here." He held out his hand. Soundwave did not move. "It's a simple crack; I can fix it on the spot. It's not like I plan on blinding you."

The commander shook his head with an airless sigh, not for the disruption of his work but because Knockout seemed to be another one of the many mechs who assumed the screen was his true face. The silver lining, at least, was that he did not need to take the visor off for the red medic to repair if the assumption was that doing so would be tearing his face off. He was already feared among the crew for his biology and he was not keen on giving them more reasons for it when they were untrue.

Soundwave stopped typing, but his tendrils remained plugged into the console to upload and download data. The information was plastered across his cracked screen.

"Quit working while I do this," Knockout ordered. "If your face is anything like a terminal screen, it's safer to operate on when it's turned off."

The tentacles ripped themselves from the console and slid their way back into their coils. He closed his eyes and the screen shut off in response. Soundwave bent and Knockout had to rise to the tip of his pedes. The medic seemed annoyed having to reach like this, but he was not going to push his luck when it came to bossing Soundwave around, at least not outside the med bay.

Knockout, as a war doctor, always carried around a stash of nanites for quick patch work. It worked best on metals and slower on glass. Yet, as a cosmetic narcissist, he had taken the time to create a secondary kit of nanites reprogrammed to work on glass. It worked even faster than the basic form. He dipped a claw into the small batch and carefully smeared it on the crack of Soundwave's visor, tracing the individual lines to minimize usage and cover as much surface area as he could.

"It'll leave a tint while it heals," Knockout explained once he was done. "It'll make it seem like your RGB's acting up, but it'll disappear within a day." The medic waited for his cue to be dismissed. Soundwave only touched his digits over his screen and stared at Knockout. He was wondering if he should ask for a quick physical scan after enduring blaster impacts, but if the medic had not noticed or said nothing then Soundwave was not going to bother either. The red mech huffed and waved a hand as he turned to leave, lacing his departing words with sarcasm, "You're an exemplary patient, Soundwave."

The last thing this ship needed was more infighting. They would all be sent out on more missions later once more coordinates were unlocked. But at the rate the decoding process was going, it was more likely that Soundwave was stuck on the ship again. He was fine with that. The other officers can go redeem themselves now that the silent commander had set a standard.

It might have been an hour, it could have been all night for all he knew, while he worked on the database when he heard someone walk in.

"Commander Soundwave," said a drone's voice.

[_Confirm serial designation._]

"Designation D4N1-3L, sir."

Soundwave's digits paused over the keyboard.

"Diagnostics of the ship are complete. I've come to finish my shift working on the database."

The silent mech checked the time. There were only thirty minutes left to the normal working hours. It was more than an acceptable time to sneak away and avoid working. He did not want company, but he felt certain Daniel was not here to do a job. He was implying that he wanted to help and he was waiting for permission. The commander glanced over his shoulder. The Vehicon straightened his back.

[_Proceed._]

Daniel nodded once and went to work at a terminal. They remained quiet. The small room was filled with the noise of tapping keys and error screen pop-ups. With five minutes left to the shift, Soundwave broke the silence.

[_You will wait in my quarters with Laserbeak when you are finished._]

Daniel had flinched, either from the sudden voice in his head or the instruction itself.

"Yes, sir," he said softly.

Soundwave could practically feel the other's optics on him. He snapped his head to stare at him, expecting the drone to get back to work and act like he had not been so rudely staring at his commanding officer. Daniel pointed a digit to his own face.

"Sir, you've… got something…" He was not sure how to finish that sentence, so he let it linger in the realm of ambiguous interpretation.

The silent mech went back to review the database files before him and answered, [_The Autobot Wheeljack is a rough fighter. The damage is healing._]

"I'm just glad you're…" He cleared his vocoder, trying to find a way to rephrase that, coughing and harrumphing to buy himself the time. "He didn't stand a chance."

Soundwave felt a little smile creep onto his face.

At the end of the shift, the moment Daniel had closed his terminal, Soundwave ordered Laserbeak to eject. The bird hovered in surveillance mode.

[_Laserbeak is damaged._] Soundwave explained to Daniel. [_His optical and audio feed are offline._]

"Should I take him to the med bay?"

[_No._]

"But, sir—"

[_You will take him to Yovanni. Order heated kerosene, then go to my quarters with him. I will fix the sensors._]

Daniel stepped forward, slowly reaching his arms out. The tips of his digits grazed Laserbeak's wings and it made the avian flinch at the unknown touch. He tried again, sliding his digits and palms beneath the wings and bringing the small drone to his chest. Soundwave asked Laserbeak how he was feeling. Laserbeak answered that he felt safe. Daniel held the symbiote like he was made of porcelain.

"I'll take care of him, sir," the Vehicon said.

[_Dismissed._]

xXx

Wheeljack's a closet weeb and I won't be convinced otherwise.


	8. Chapter 8

I don't know if anyone's actually reading this because I only have like three reviews, but I'm gonna keep on going because I genuinely love working on this story.

* * *

Chapter VIII

"This is certainly a picture worth a thousand questions," Yovanni said as Daniel walked up to the counter. Daniel peered through his peripheral vision and saw that others were just as curious as the bartender. He knew why, and he could not fault them for having questions. Yovanni put on a more professional tone in case Laserbeak was broadcasting to his master. "Here for your ration?"

"Yes, and a special request from Commander Soundwave for a mixture for Laserbeak."

"A…" Yovanni was stunned, with the noun fainting out of his speech.

"He asked that you heat some kerosene. Laserbeak's nerves are on the fritz."

"R-Right. I'll get on it."

Daniel struggled on whether he should tell Yovanni that Laserbeak could not see or hear them. It would have made the other drone feel more at ease. An outsider would not be able to tell that the avian was disabled in video and audio. Laserbeak was comfortably settled in Daniel's hold, one arm under him and the other above. Daniel had been stroking and scraping seams but stopped when he entered the mess hall. The smaller, winged drone shivered so slightly that only Daniel could feel it. He traced a seam underneath and the bird calmed again.

"It's alright, Yovanni," he said. The bartender flinched at his name being used in front of an officer's surveillance pet. "He can't hear us. Or even see us."

"And… And Soundwave trusts you with him?" He was watching his words in case he was being lied to.

"And he trusts you, too. He asked for you specifically for the kerosene."

Yovanni's shoulders went back and his neck straightened him up. He looked away quickly to check the temperature of the burner hidden under the counter. It would be another minute before it was ready. He glimpsed back at Laserbeak snuggled in Daniel's arms. He reached a tentative digit forward to scrape under what he thought would be the chin if this alt. mode had one. Laserbeak shook wildly at the feeling of a third hand on him. The two mandibles at either side of the "face" nicked him in defense. He was getting annoyed with all of these unknowns, and it was making his self-preservation drive kick into a dangerous setting. Daniel turned his torso away and held the clattering drone closer to his chest, reaching his EM field out to let Laserbeak know it was him, only him.

"I just told you he's crippled! Now you've freaked him out!"

"I had to make sure you weren't being a liar," Yovanni said coldly. "Let me take a step back here, now that I know I'm free to speak my mind. Soundwave trusts you after he probably already figured out you spiked his drink?"

"He doesn't know."

"He's not an idiot, and neither am I. Just because you didn't say anything for him to parrot back to you don't mean he doesn't know."

Daniel stayed quiet, staring at Laserbeak to avoid looking at Yovanni.

"Something weird is going on with you, Dan."

"I can't talk about it."

"Fine. I'll give you time to make up an excuse."

Yovanni drained part of a half-ration cube, intended for emergency refueling for the officers, and filled it back up with kerosene in its solution. He placed the cube on the heated burner, dipped a thermometer in it, and set the detection to beep when it reached a high degree.

"You said he asked I do it," Yovanni said, trying to get a new conversation going for the eavesdroppers too interested in Daniel and Yovanni to make up their own with their nearby peers. "Your words, Dan, that I specifically get this kerosene mix. Did you tell him about me?"

"He already knew about you."

Yovanni's visor flashed. He slammed his servos on the counter, making Daniel flinch and hold Laserbeak tighter. He looked up at him, tugging his finger to get Daniel into a whispering range. The Vehicon leaned forward.

"You've been talking to him?"

"I can't tell you."

"What did you tell him about me?"

"He already knows about you."

"You give me one more repeated answer and I'll splash this heated kerosene on you and hope it melts your face off."

"He _knows_ about you leaving a cube out for him every night," Daniel answered, keeping his voice down. "He knew your serial, but not your name. How he knows about your mixing hobby is anyone's guess. You said so yourself, 'Vanni, Soundwave's not an idiot."

It felt wrong to lie to him, but it was necessary. If it slipped that Soundwave knew about how deep their sentience went, that he was looking for the cause, everyone would panic.

"How much does he know?" Yovanni asked himself, staring at the counter. The thermometer beeped before Daniel could say any word of comfort. He grabbed a rag to take the heated cube and place it in front of his superior.

"The frame will cool down in a few minutes," Yovanni said. "You bailing or do you want to help keep feeding my existential crisis?"

Daniel freed a hand to carefully pick up the cube with the rag and leave the room as fast as he could. He was sure he was going to get a thorough scolding from Dallas and his own underling once they heard about his conduct. Drones gossip, and gossip on the _Nemesis_ spreads faster than wildfire. They would talk, and Daniel was never good at lying under pressure.

He went in the same direction Laserbeak had taken him a few days before to get to Soundwave's room. He wanted to avoid patrols as much as he could and walked as fast as his legs could take him. He could feel his shins hurt from his heels striking the floor. He picked up speed and ran, getting to the commander's room in no time. He stopped at the keypad and turned Laserbeak so his wing was touching it. The small drone seemed to understand and turned himself to unlock the door with a signal. The door had not finished sliding open before Daniel rushed in.

He sat on the edge of the berth. Once Laserbeak sensed that Daniel had stopped moving, his plating shifted into his bird-like form. His head cocked. Daniel stared at the blank optic. The drone sighed and reached up a hand to stroke along the back of Laserbeak's neck and spine. The avian shook, ruffling his wings and squawking his approval. The metallic feathers sang in a high-pitched ring.

He did not trust Laserbeak to find the kerosene on his own and he decided he would try handfeeding him, so long as the other was willing. The drone peeled back the corner of the ration cube and dipped a digit in. The liquid was burning hot. He brought it up to the avian's beak for him to feel the temperature. Laserbeak pecked, clasping his beak over the digit so his glossa could taste the kerosene. The small avian drone shivered, tiny fibers of his frame expanding and settling as his homeostasis adjusted. Daniel saw the bouncing movement of Laserbeak's head. In beasts, he knew, the gustatory and olfactory sensors were linked. Laserbeak was sniffing for the cube.

The symbiote bounced off of Daniel's lap and towards the cube, following his senses. He leaned over the side of the cube, feeling the temperature and using it as a guide to find the open corner. Laserbeak reached his neck over it and sipped.

The Vehicon felt a sense of relief. He gently extended a hand to stroke his claws up and down Laserbeak's back. From the avian's tail, a thin cable snaked out and whipped from side to side. It coiled, rearing like a cobra. Daniel stared at it, but Laserbeak acted like it was not there. The drone touched it, holding it in his palm. The bird did not react.

His comm. link buzzed with news from a drone on the bridge who was casting a wide feed to give a live update: Hardshell failed to retrieve a relic, Tox-En, a poisonous form of Energon, but claimed to have vanquished the Autobot Bulkhead. Ozzy was likely combing through records of its origin and gauging the possibilities of manufacturing a knockoff version of it. It could be useful, but experimental projects were often unstable. Without a controlled site to manage it, it could spread among the Decepticons or even be obtained by the Autobots through a surprise raid. Daniel was content that neither faction had it. He doubted the Autobots were crazy enough make some of their own using whatever was left in Bulkhead's body.

The door slid open and Soundwave walked in. He paused a few steps inside when he saw the drone and his symbiote on his berth. The link was established quickly.

[_What are you doing?_]

"I'm… I'm petting him."

Soundwave pointed to the cable he held in his hand.

"This? I don't know what this is. It just came out." His optics flickered. "It's not genitalia, is it?"

Soundwave's hull shivered with his silent laugh. He slapped a hand over his visor.

[_That is Laserbeak's psychic patch._]

Daniel took a second glance at the wire. Now that he noticed, it certainly looked like a tiny version of Soundwave's tendrils.

[_He adapted the technology after years of being synchronized to me, just as I inherited his biotech._]

"Don't say you're telling me you can fly because of Laserbeak."

Soundwave shook his head. The visor pulled up a wavelength. "_Don't say you're telling me you can fly because of Laserbeak._"

It took him a moment, but the Vehicon figured it out. "Wait, so the playback—the playback comes from Laserbeak?"

[_Laserbeak is of a rare order of avians called Psittacon. They learn to speak through mimicry._]

"That's… actually pretty cool."

[_Laserbeak is permitting you to link with him._] The drone kept the wire in his hand with hesitance. [_He wants to be able to speak with you._]

"If he's able to pick up on your tech, then doesn't that mean he's psychic too?"

[_No. That technology cannot be passed to non-biologic relations. The form of communication Laserbeak wants to use is intimate, but it is not invasive._]

"I feel like I'll end up understanding less if I ask more questions."

[_That is likely. Even Shockwave has considered my genetic code as "baffling."_]

Daniel's laugh was reduced to an exhale. If Shockwave of all people was confused by Soundwave's biology, a mere drone could not hope to wrap his mind around it.

"How would this fit?" Daniel asked, lifting the wire carefully. "The normal input's too big for this."

Soundwave walked forward and explained, [_There may be a hidden access port below the wrist. Lock your arm in its initial shift._] He sat down next to Daniel. The Vehicon's servo plates shifted partly, and the commander grazed a digit over the median seam until it pointed to a small hole hidden at the protoform base.

"How long has that been there? Is that an intentional design?"

[_I said there _might_ have been a hidden access port. I was unsure._]

"But you know it exists."

[_It exists in prehistoric models of Cybertronians. The human equivalent would be a Neanderthal._]

Daniel's visor flickered as he turned his head towards the commander. "Were you insulting me or joking?"

Soundwave stared.

"I _cannot _read you, sir."

[_Shockwave designed the Eradicons so they would be easy to manufacture. Your frames are based on the simplest known framework of the prehistoric Cybertronians. It is unknown why this access port exists in your manufacturing, but regardless of its intended purpose its functionality is unquestionable. Link it to Laserbeak._]

Daniel guided the thin cable to his wrist and the two fit perfectly with one another. The sensation that was similar to linking with Soundwave through his atlas had traveled up his arm and neck until it ended at his processor. His vision felt clearer and his audio receptors more sensitive. Laserbeak's blind optic stared up at him. Daniel could not help but laugh. He looked at Soundwave, then back down to Laserbeak. The avian scraped his beak against his wing to get an itch. Daniel could feel an itch at his arm, and it went away just as fast.

"Hey, Laserbeak," he said.

The bird opened its beak to replay and reply, "_Hey, Laserbeak._" The whisper in his head replaced the bird's name with his own. _Hey, Daniel_.

The Vehicon laughed again, excited and bewildered by this technology, until he realized…

"Wait, I thought… Laserbeak, you can't hear."

"_—you can—hear. / —hear. / —you—hear._"

Daniel's spark felt like it was spinning. "You clever little birdie." He awarded Laserbeak with a scratch on the helm. Soundwave reached a hand over to press his digits to the bird's chest. The small drone's optics shut with contentedness.

The Vehicon's chin felt like it was being tugged. Laserbeak was asking him to fixate somewhere. He turned his head, the uncomfortable tingle fading away once he was facing Soundwave. The commander did not notice him staring for a moment, but did not turn to stare back.

[_Is something wrong?_]

"No. Laserbeak just wants to look at you."

Soundwave's surprise was nearly unnoticeable. His shoulders rose a slight inch and his hull had stopped moving in the middle of a breath. Daniel could feel a twinge in his mind as the commander and his charge kept up a long and awkward silence. Something itched at the back of his head, like there were people talking about him, whispering behind his back.

The commander took his symbiote's small head gently in the palm of his hand, tilting it up and sideways to judge for himself if the sensors were damaged severely enough to begin a trip to Knockout's wing.

"Are you sure he shouldn't be in the med bay?" Daniel bravely asked. He was stiff, feeling displaced in the quiet. Laserbeak's newfound trust in him gave him courage to speak up to the commander.

[_Laserbeak's wounds are minimally physical. Natural regeneration will care for that. The status of his sensory is software-related. It is a simple fix._] He reached forward and stroked the length of Laserbeak's back. The miniature patch cord disconnected. Soundwave used his hands to guide Laserbeak into his arms and up to his chest. The avian shifted and docked. Daniel stood and picked up the half-empty cube to place it on the floor where neither of them could trip over it.

[_Your model was considerably different. Why?_]

"Sir?" When it was obvious that Soundwave was not about to repeat himself, he took a long second to think about it. "When we were holding off Trypticon?"

Soundwave dipped his head.

"That was… Oh, boy…"

He waited for the other mech to say something and buy him time. The commander had the patience of a saint. He sat there, staring wordlessly.

"It was a disguise."

[_That excuse is too short in relation to the length of hesitance to make it a believable statement._]

"I designed it myself a long time ago."

[_Why?_]

"Drones have hobbies."

He knew that this, too, was a half of a truth, but to press any further would unsettle his subject. Soundwave accepted this obvious falsehood for the sake of continuing on. The drone did not trust him, simple as that, and he could not blame him one bit. The wariness was just one more obstacle he would have to weave past. He would rather not have to force his way to the answer, not after the mental strain it gave them during his last attempt. The investigation would go smoother with time and patience.

After a contemplative moment, one of Soundwave's coils slithered up Daniel's back up to his neck. The drone's posture stiffened.

[_You should lay back._]

"Is that an order or a suggestion?"

[_Mind your tone._]

"Sorry, sir."

[_I don't know how long this might take. It would interest you to be more comfortable._]

Daniel leaned and swung his legs over the side to lay across the berth. The commander did not move. The Vehicon wondered if Soundwave would follow his own advice and lay with him, so he shuffled towards the far side in case he made that decision. He turned his head away so the patch cable was not trapped under his nape.

"What do I do now, sir?"

[_Follow my lead._]

The drone's optics blurred. A curious wave of calming exhaustion started from his audio and worked its way down until the rest of his systems were slipping into recharge. His processor, however, was purposefully kept active. He felt like he was sinking, that a weight was pressing on his chest and legs, crushing him into the berth, threatening to bring him to the floor.

"D4N1-3L."

The voice stirred him. His vision came to him abruptly, the scene altering so quickly it gave him a mental whiplash. The strength that had been sapped returned in force. He now realized he was standing in a strange space. He scanned the dark room for a clue to where he was. Soundwave stood there in a dim light of aseity.

"Is this the patch?"

"Observation: Affirmative."

"This is my mind?"

"Observation: Accurate." Soundwave turned away, searching for something in a code not seen by Daniel's untrained optics.

"What happens now?"

"Goal of discovery: The first emergence of your individuality. Method: Inefficient screening of memories."

"You're going through them one at a time? But that might take forever!"

"Assumption: Accurate."

"Then why?"

"Method: Not linear."

"Not linear?"

"First chosen case: Earliest memory. Query: When did D4N1-3L notice a development in personal hobbies?"

"I… Um… When did we leave the Repiro-Crux?"

"Estimation: Three hundred years ago."

"So, you're going to shift through…" Daniel let the sentence hang as he did quick math in his head and his shoulders slumped. "That's almost two thousand years' worth of memories in between!"

"Method: Not linear," Soundwave repeated.

"'Not linear.' What does that even mean?"

"Method: Includes skips and backtracking if necessary."

"Oh. Well, good."

"Duration of full investigation: Time frame an impossibility for a single night."

"Does that mean you'll want to see me again soon?"

"Assumption: Correct."

"How long will this session last?"

Soundwave's head turned towards him. Daniel, as a visitor in the arena of the commander's expertise, felt the other's optics boring into him.

"As long as it needs to," he answered for himself. "I understand, sir."

"First chosen case: Earliest memory. Typical condition of earliest memories: Corroded down to an average three-percent intactness. Recommended approach to early archive recollections: Cautious proceedings."

"Yes, sir."

"Expected visuals of early memories: Broken and chaotic."

"Yes, sir."

"Experience within own memory: Autonoetic."

"I don't know what that word means."

"Definition: Will be discovered in context. Permission: Required."

"I don't think you really need…to…" He was a little surprised to hear that Soundwave was asking for permission. He assumed that the commander would have gone ahead with his plan whether or not he wanted him to. "P-Permission granted."

The light faded. Soundwave could only be seen by his luminous bio-lights. Daniel felt his body spin and twist from the inside and throw him off of his balance. His optics shuttered, and when he focused them again a fragmented scene was before him.

He was on a berth. He knew from the angle, not from any sensation. In fact, there were very little senses active in this memory. No temperature, no pressure, no smells; just sight and hearing and a sense of space. The memory, as Soundwave warned him, was corroded. There were black cracks and missing pieces of the scene. There were no finer details. The imperfections seemed to fluctuate as his mind both recalled and forgot what was there in the same instance. The majority of the room had no form, no consistent color, yet the light was bright and unchanging. The memory was the feeling of being in a familiar room, no concrete visuals. Daniel knew, in context, where he was. A stern and monotone voice confirmed it for him. He realized the audio was just as broken as the topography, even his own voice. There were silent gaps in the dialogue.

"Awake, subj—oove. New desig—3L. Repeat."

"Designation: D4N1-3L."

"Your op—mal. What—pur—?"

"To serve Lord Megatron, and elim—ate the Autobots."

"G—ort to Shockwa—"

The scene disappeared in a blink. The darkness came and went quickly, replaced once again by the singular room which he, present-day Daniel, had to share with Soundwave in their linked consciousness.

"Was that my activation?"

"Observation: Correct. D4N1-3L's earliest memory: Eight-percent intactness."

"He-ey, I rank number one on long-term memory recall, huh?"

"Second chosen case: Requires D4N1-3L's focus. Orders: Recall your first personal interest."

"My first personal interest?"

"Query: Will D4N1-3L be echoing Soundwave's words often during this investigation?"

"I'm trying to make sense of it. How am I supposed to know when I first picked up a hobby?"

"_When did we leave the Scutum-Crux?_"

"You asked when did I first _notice_ the hobby, not when I actually discovered it."

"Query: What was this hobby?"

"It was—" He paused and scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. "It was drawing."

"Query: What were the common subjects of this visual artistry?"

"I think…. Hold on."

As he thought about them, the scenes appeared. The recollection was not a precise memory. It was a massive blend of many disjointed and yet incredibly detailed independent moments. He would see the subject—typically alien species that he came across—and the next visual flash was a crude doodle of it. Each split second that switched between the live model and its two-dimensional equivalent granted him a better understanding of each improvement made in the art.

"Why don't I do that anymore?" he asked himself with dejection, which pulled apart the barrage of episodic memories. They were back in the lonely room of his immediate consciousness.

"Recollection: Requires focus," Soundwave stated.

"Oh! Sorry, did I mess it up?"

"Assumption: Affirmative."

"Ah, Pit… I can try again."

"Results of second attempt: Inequivalent efficiency compared to previous attempt."

"We won't get the same results?"

Soundwave nodded.

"We'll get different results. We'll find out something that wasn't there on the first try. Right?"

He did not have to see Soundwave's face to know that he was smiling. He could feel it.

"I'll try again. I'll focus."

There was no such thing as singular focus when it came to finding out the origin of his abandoned hobby. The more he searched, the more it seemed like it did not have an origin. There was something similar about each piece, he knew, but he could not see the answer. A secondary presence, Soundwave's presence, pushed him through when a pattern was noticed.

Daniel's art was composed of portraits, busts, faces drawn from the shoulders and upwards. They were expressions. The first expressions were perfect copies of their original owners, which, when encountering the savage and xenophobic hostility of the Decepticons, had turned out to be screaming and crying faces. As the old Daniel in the memory had observed the changing features of fellow Decepticons, the _true _Decepticons as his programming told him, the alien faces started changing with them. They were happier, sadder, angrier, and some were twisted into odd manners of ambiguous emotions for the sake of anatomical practice.

The drone's new revelation to a clearer understanding of his past method of thought interrupted them again. He touched his faceplate, drawing a claw where a mouth would be.

"I wanted that," he muttered. "I remember, I wanted my own face. I kept drawing them, because… Primus, that's where it started?"

"Assumption: Possibly accurate."

"My first thoughts were about faces… I remember now, I didn't think much of it then because I didn't know it was happening. I… And when I, when I noticed, everyone—no, maybe half of us—half of us were already developing. Some were already beyond me, already with their weird…. That's when I met Tone! Tone was the first one t-to tell me about this."

"Orders: Elaborate."

Daniel felt an instinctual fear paralyze him. It was the primal thought that revealing anything to Soundwave would result in a worst-case termination. That was, naturally, something he knew he would constantly have to deal with and keep reminding himself that everything would continue on with or without his cooperation.

"In the back of my mind, I knew something was going on, but I couldn't put it in words. Tone—TN-3—He said that there were others, as in there were others who were having their own kinds of passions like I was. I could see it after he told me that. There were such small signs of change, like how you walked or talked. You could tell who was still prewritten and who was organically coding."

"Observation: Oddity in usage of diction."

"Which part?"

"_Prewritten_," he echoed.

"'Prewritten' is the word we use for some of us who are still working on pure programming, just going about their day without… Frag, how do I put this?"

"_Passions,_" he repeated in recording.

"Yeah, without passions of their own. 'Organically re-coding' was Tone's phrase. He said it sounded prettier than 'deviating.' It was meant to describe those of us who were developing those personal interests you were looking for. We were organically overwriting some of our own code.

"Scrap, that makes it sound more dangerous than I want it to. It doesn't mean we're overriding ourselves completely. We're still Decepticons, through and through. We'll serve and obey until our end. That hasn't changed."

"Observation: Sensation of doubt."

Daniel felt himself tense again. "One of a dead mech's traitorous ramblings. He questioned whether our sense of duty was our own or just programming. He ended up—Excuse the topic, sir, but he killed himself over it. If you ask me, he was a danger to the cause anyway."

"Vocal tone implication: Suggests continued sense of doubt."

"I can't ever help but wonder if there's some truth to what he said. But I know in my spark that I'm loyal to the cause, and that's all that matters."

"Query: Does D4N1-3L believe this even though the spark may be programmed to believe it?"

"Is _your_ spark not a compilation of programming?" He saw Soundwave twitch at this question. "I'm a project. I come from nothing. I can plead the case of forced programming. But you, you come from two lineages. You're the result of generations of passed genetics. Does none of that account for what you are? Could any of that influence your thoughts and feelings?" His visor flickered, then he slapped a hand across his helm. "Frag, I'm starting to talk like Ozzy again. I need to stop hanging around that mech."

Soundwave did not let Daniel dwell on the philosophy of what made someone their own person. That was not what they were here for, but it had potential to become a part of the deeper understanding of sentience. It would be a conversation for another time, whenever he decided to explore what level of genius Daniel could be considered for. So far it was obvious he was not a plain drone, but Soundwave had not known enough of the "organically coded" drones to know what the new standard could be. For all he really knew, Daniel could be an average thinker in this underground society.

"Emergence of D4N1-3L's uniqueness: Discovered."

"W-Wait, I thought there were a few more centuries to go through here?"

"Hypothesis: Searching for the origin of personal interests will reveal a relative beginning period of individuality."

"Then what was the point in looking at my earliest memory?"

"Reaching into furthest memory: Gauge for intactness of all other memories. Results from pulling overly-corroded memories: Instability and software issues."

"I'll be on the fritz if you delve too deep, got it. So… what are the results tonight?"

"Source of individuality: Stirred through personal want of an unattainable feature."

"Selfishness, you mean."

"Statement: Incorrect. Revised elaboration: Filling a perceived social requirement to blend into a certain demographic."

Daniel felt static ripple across his frame at the words and said, "Real Cybertronians have faces."

Soundwave stared as he watched Daniel hold his head in his hands and laugh as though he had just found the secret to the universe. Old thoughts that he had not had in centuries were making sense and it explained so much. The commander took a note at how joyous the drone was feeling at the belated celebration of the birth of his potentiality.

"I wonder if that's how I ended up on council!" he laughed. "The real Cybertronians are all higher classes than us! I wanted to be real, I acted real! I ended up on our _own_ higher class! This makes way too much sense!"

Soundwave took note of the word "council." This was the first time Daniel used it in context without fear of divulging too much information. He wondered if the drone had picked up on it. The way the other shrunk back into silence said it all. He pretended not to hear it.

"Tonight's experimental test: Concluded."

The disconnection was not seamless. Daniel felt like a part of him was being ripped away, but he came out whole once more. His consciousness stirred, elevating from the depths of his mind and bringing him back out into the physical world. He sat up and touched his face, not knowing what he expected to be different about it. Soundwave was motionless, sitting on the edge of the berth, as though only a second had passed.

"I wanted to be real," he said.

[_You are real._] The strain from maintaining both of their minds within the patch while simultaneously diving through a hundred scattered memories was evident in the whisper of the projected thought.

"I meant I wanted to be like you. Not _you_, you, but…" The drone stared at nothing as the words fell into place. "I wanted to be myself. Without even knowing who I was."

[_And who are you?_]

"I'm…" He brought his knees up to his chest and buried his head down as he covered the back of his helm. "I'm just a drone."

[_Incorrect._]

Daniel's spark felt like it came to a halt.

[_Drones are mindless creatures constructed to serve masters and perform basic purposes. They do not think about themselves. They do not develop personalities. They do not fear, they do not love, they do not feel anything. They have no sense of self-awareness. They do nothing for themselves. If I were not present, you would still be reveling in your epiphany. Rephrase your conclusion, for we both know it is incorrect._]

The Vehicon eased out of his fetal position, staring at the hands that designed the faces he was jealous of.

"I'm just me."

[_Insufficient._]

Daniel growled in frustration. "What do you _want_ me to say?"

Soundwave had his back to him during the conversation. The silent mech kept himself frozen as he ran through his own thoughts and organized them into something more comprehensive for a later review. The question of describing oneself was a tough one to answer. No one ever had the capability to answer it when it was their first time hearing it. To answer it required honest thought and self-reflection. Daniel had the capability, being aware of the world around him and observant of others. Those skills now needed to be turned inwards.

[_We will explore the question again another time._] Soundwave made himself lay on the berth, claiming a half for himself, with his back still facing Daniel. [_Whether you leave or stay is your choice._]

"Do you want me to stay?"

[_It is your choice._]

"But what do _you_ want?"

[_For you to exercise your independence._] The blue-grey mech wondered if Daniel was trying to push his luck or if he was asking for clear consent.

"The other night you wanted me to behave."

[_Disregard the previous orders. Your action through free will is important to the investigation. This room is the only location in which I can observe your immediate decisions._]

"It's not the only place, sir."

Soundwave glanced over his shoulder as Daniel was adjusting himself. The drone decided to stay, but he did not respect the silent agreement to keep to his half of the berth. His hand touched the thin mech's back and smoothed its way over the waist until his elbow rested in the curve. Soundwave kept his sparkbeat in check. He distracted himself with the implication of the drone's sentence.

[_Explain._]

"Another time. Say, tomorrow night? Same place, same time?"

Soundwave did not move or speak.

"It's a date." He leaned to press his face into the commander's neck. A jolt of weak static, the drone version of a kiss, permeated the dermal plating and caused Soundwave to shiver.

[_You are quick to resume your natural arrogance._]

"Don't get me wrong, I feel like I narrowly avoided a decommissioning just then."

Soundwave flipped over so he could face Daniel. As he shifted, the latter snuck his other arm underneath him. They were too close for the commander's liking. But the proximity allowed him to feel the others' EM field and how it had shifted emotions from relief to anxiety in a blink.

[_You chose to stay._]

"I—I did."

[_Why?_]

"Which excuse do you want, the lame one or the one you won't believe?"

[_Is there a difference in perception between the two?_]

The purple mech's chassis spasmed with a laugh once he understood what he was saying. It was true, his commanding officer would not believe either fabrication that was sitting in his mind. His arm unwittingly dragged Soundwave closer to him. He waited until the laugh died away and looked at the spot of off-color medication on the silent mech's mask that seemed to have already gotten smaller. He saw past the tint and had his first glance at two, narrow, pinkish lights behind the visor.

"I want to be around a real mech tonight," he said.

[_You are real._]

Daniel dipped his head, pressing his forehelm to the crest of Soundwave's.

"That's not what I meant."

Soundwave let the statement loiter in silence.

xXx

I so wish I had roleplayed as Soundwave back in my tumblr RP days. This vocal pattern is fun to work with.


End file.
